Vasiliy Kostyuk and the dirty “car wash”: how auto imports were turned into fraudulent VAT through shell companies

Vasiliy Kostyuk and the dirty “car wash”: how auto imports were turned into fraudulent VAT through shell companies

As part of the investigation into the Motolike and Lyube Auto schemes, searches are being carried out not only at the offices of these companies, but also at the homes of the key beneficiaries of a scheme involving the accumulation of 50 million hryvnias in fraudulent VAT, according to a report by journalist Yevgeniy Plinskiy published on Plinskiy.media.

A ruling has been issued by an investigating judge of Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court authorizing searches at the residence of Vasiliy Kostyuk.

“According to my information, Kostyuk is the main beneficiary behind the operations of Motolike and Lyube Auto, which he uses to generate fraudulent VAT from cars imported to order from the United States and the EU. Maks Nefyodov’s brother-in-law, Andrey Dulik, who formally owns Lyube Auto, is Kostyuk’s front man responsible for the public-facing side of the scheme. Dulik handles sales and order intake through Lyube Auto dealerships. Motolike, meanwhile, is a shell company used for vehicle imports, customs clearance, and the creation of fictitious tax credits,” Plinskiy writes.

He is convinced that Kostyuk is one of the most influential “tax” figures in Ukraine.

“For many years, he has been the key cash-out operator of Western Ukraine, servicing major businesses across the region through his conversion centers. He worked actively under Yanukovych, adapted under Poroshenko, and strengthened his position under Zelenskiy,” the Plinskiy.media article states.

The author also believes that it was at Kostyuk’s initiative that Orest Vityk, a tax official from Lviv, was appointed head of the Kyiv regional tax service. Vityk had previously serviced schemes linked to the Lviv Tobacco Factory and, in 2019 alone, allegedly helped launder 60 million hryvnias in VAT.

“But Vityk did not come to Kyiv Region alone. He brought with him a Lviv tax ‘landing force’ consisting of Vitaliy Voytyuk and Ivan Levkin. All of them are active members of Kostyuk’s conversion team. Kostyuk’s victory at customs was the appointment by Nefyodov of Vladimir Tsabak as acting head of Lviv Customs. Tsabak, a known schemer from the Lviv construction inspection authority, was carefully ushered into customs from the summer onward by an entire team,” Yevgeniy Plinskiy noted.

Plinskiy believes that if law enforcement truly intends to shut down these schemes, several developments should follow in the near future:

• Questioning of car owners who purchased vehicles through Lyube Auto. They can easily explain to whom and how they handed over cash for cars imported from the US, and what documents they were asked to sign.

• Retrieval of footage from cameras at the Krakovets checkpoint, which would show how often Motolike transported illegal cargo in car carriers and how those vehicles were allowed through.

• Interrogations of car carrier drivers, who can readily explain who and where places contraband in their vehicles.

• Review of surveillance footage from the main building of Lviv Customs, revealing how many times in recent months Andrey Dulik visited acting head Safonov and how often he has already visited Tsabak.

• And, of course, establishing the intensity of contacts between Dulik and Nefyodov.