Solskyi-Tkachuk’s team earns millions of dollars on grain exports every month

Solskyi-Tkachuk’s team earns millions of dollars on grain exports every month

Minister of Agriculture Mykola Solskyi, together with the head of the State Food and Consumer Service Serhiy Tkachuk and his deputy Vadym Chaikovskyi, created a criminal group that earns millions of dollars every month on the “grain corridor”.

While some are giving their lives and health for the state... Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi is suspected of taking state land worth UAH 291 million and attempting to seize territory worth another UAH 190 million, - NABU

“There are no complaints about our products on the world market. I have not seen such threats. We did not receive mass notifications...”, says the head of the State Food and Consumer Service Serhiy Tkachuk. But facts are stubborn things. Ukraine continues to receive more and more complaints ( notifications ) about the quality of exported grain. Why then does the State Food Service deliberately hide the real threat of losing markets for our grain products? Perhaps because the establishment of legal and transparent work will eliminate multimillion-dollar extortion schemes from exporters?

Falsification of phytosanitary certificates, delays in issuance and falsification of laboratory test results are a corruption component in the activities of the State Border Guard Service, which does not disappear, even despite regular revelations by law enforcement agencies and the detention of those involved.

The Solskyi-Tkachuk-Loif-Potokin criminal group continues to use the phytosanitary laboratories of the State GPS Service as a tool to force exporters to pay $2 for each ton of grain exported from Ukraine (Reference: according to the Ministry of Agriculture, exports of grains and legumes in April alone amount to 4,500,000 tons )

According to rumors, the coordinator of the process of extorting funds from exporters is the former director of the phytosanitary department, Vitaliy Romanenko. He negotiates with exporters for cooperation, and in case of refusal, he guarantees the identification of pests in grain products based on the results of laboratory tests.

The guarantors of the issuance of the “necessary” results of Romanenko are the heads of Odesa (Kateryna Abuselidze), Mykolaiv (Oleksandr Pastukh) and Kyiv central (Oleh Melnyk) phytolaboratories. The latter has a special mission - to refute preliminary positive test results, provided that the exporter has agreed to “cooperate”. The table shows evidence of the disappearance of “pests” during repeated analysis of grain in the Kyiv Central Phytolab.

Along with Romanenko, the current director of the Department of Phytosanitary Security of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, Andriy Chelombitko, who is linked in the media to multimillion-dollar corruption schemes and poaching, plays an equally important role in the process of enriching grain exports. Chelombitko, in cooperation with Volodymyr Kusturov, head of the State Tax Service in Odesa region, Yevhen Zheleznyak, head of the Phytosafety Department, and his deputy Iryna Bereza, force their subordinates to issue phytosanitary certificates for grain, despite the fact that its quality does not meet the stated requirements of the importing country.

One example of this is the shipment of the ARGEUS vessel with a cargo of 62,213 tonnes of barley infected with the pest Aegilops cylindrica, which, according to paragraph 405 of the Catalogue of Quarantine Pests for Import Plants to China, is prohibited for importation into China. The conclusions of the examination are given below.

Grain exports are a strategically important component of Ukraine’s economy. The loss of agricultural markets will only worsen the already difficult economic situation in our country. However, the management of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection is more interested in personal profit than in the future of Ukraine. Who else should NABU, SBI and other law enforcement agencies detain so that officials stop profiting from the grain corridor?

Author: Yana Bilenko