Lviv Customs – the heart of smuggling worth hundreds of millions of dollars: who is behind the schemes?

Lviv Customs – the heart of smuggling worth hundreds of millions of dollars: who is behind the schemes?

A tough Monday for Lviv Customs.

Poland has officially confirmed the operation of a multimillion-dollar smuggling channel through Lviv Customs under the “buses” scheme. The volumes will shock you.

I am publishing an exclusive report provided by the State Customs Service of Ukraine (SCSU) to the Financial Committee of Parliament. According to it, Polish customs officers reported that just one van, IVECO ВС5179ТМ, made four trips and imported smuggled goods worth almost $1,000,000 in just ten days of February 2025!

This is the total amount that the IVECO driver declared to Polish customs as export declarations.
However, all of this was imported into Ukraine without customs clearance as used goods. Moreover, Lviv customs officials, facilitating and covering up the scheme, deliberately inserted fake photos of used goods into the customs database.

For instance, on 10.02.2025, the customs database stated that IVECO ВС5179ТМ imported used mowers and bicycles into Ukraine, while the Polish records showed exports worth 11,899,406 UAH.

On 06.02.2025, the database showed used refrigerators, while the Polish goods left valued at 6,395,445 UAH.

On 04.02.2025, the database listed used bicycles, but in reality, these were the same new goods, the final value of which is still being calculated by the SCSU (preliminarily approximately 10 million UAH).

And the fourth trip: on 14.02, the van was detained at the border, with goods worth 10,346,936 UAH discovered inside. I previously described the reason for the detention earlier. 

Greed played a cruel joke on the smugglers, who decided not to give customs officials the usual “10% cut” of the smuggled value from this trip but attempted to cross the border with the “bus” disguised as empty. The customs officials got upset and detained the vehicle, drawing our attention to this topic.

Now, with the officially confirmed value of $250,000 of smuggling per trip, imagine the amount smuggled by this IVECO in 2024 when it made around 30 such trips. 20 of them happened in the autumn of 2024, specifically through Krakivets and with the same shift of Oleg Kryvshuk, who let it through in February 2025.

If each was worth $200,000, that is $6 million in smuggling. And Lviv Customs did not have a single query. (The Poles are already preparing statistics for 2024.)

And this is just one van, dissected by us down to the molecules, whereas about 200 such vehicles operate within the Lviv Customs area.

Every few days, each of them makes such a smuggling trip on assigned customs officers’ shifts involved in this “carousel.” These vans are controlled by 3–4 criminal groups linked with local law enforcement and directly with the management of Lviv Customs.
This is a classic organized crime group. A gang. A border mafia. Call it what you will.

Without exaggeration, I can say: today, this “conveyor belt” of vans at Lviv Customs is one of the most powerful smuggling channels in Ukraine.

These aren’t large trucks that draw attention but small inconspicuous vans that 24/7 haul goods worth tens of millions of dollars all while bypassing the taxes of a warring country.

And the “bow” on this story:
The SCSU report indicates that the criminal case on the detained van by the Lviv Territorial Office of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) was registered on 17.02.2025.
However, the detention took place on 14.02.

Why did it take four days to register the case?

Because no one intended to register or investigate anything. It was a planned demonstrative “spanking” by the Lviv customs officers to show the smugglers “not to skip the bribes” and continue working “for the pocket.”

The criminal case was registered by the BES only after my post and the publicity of the scheme on 17.02. But even so, no one is planning to investigate it.

Lviv Customs, following the Polish response, plays dumb again and blames the IVECO driver, against whom they drew up a protocol of customs rule violations. Seriously? The driver is the main organizer? You haven’t even suspended the shift leader Kryvshuk, who allowed the van to pass and inserted fake photos.

The only encouraging aspect is the registration of the case by NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) detectives. We eagerly await a swift investigation and result.

What should happen next after the exposure of such a loud and already proven scheme?
Immediate personnel decisions — both at Lviv Customs and at the SCSU central administration.

Is it necessary to dismantle all 200 buses for this?