Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Chief Military Prosecutor Anatolii Matios told a briefing, Censor.NET reports citing 112 Ukraine TV channel.
According to Matios, 454 searches are underway in 220 apartments, 54 houses, 36 garages, 21 pieces of real estate, 85 cars owned by the suspects. The raids are also ongoing at grain elevators, plants, and factories presumably involved in the corrupt practices. The crime ring reportedly caused damage exceeding 96 billion hryvnia.
"More than 1,700 National Police officers and about 500 military prosecutors are involved in 454 searches on the territory of 15 country ' s regions. A number of persons are being simultaneously apprehended in order to bring them to court to impose pre-trial restrictions due to the efforts and assistance of the Interior Ministry, National Guard. They will be delivered here by air, served indictments to and sent to the Pecherskyi court which will consider our motions on pre-trial detention," Matios said.
According to chief military prosecutor, the court has alresdy imposed pre-trial detention on several detainees: " 23 persons have already been arrested, including the former head of the Inland Revenue Ministry department in the Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk regions, Autonomous Republic of Crimea; a number of tax service officials of almost all Kyiv district directorates which status is actually equal to the one of a regional tax directorate; Poltava tax service head and his deputies; former deputy head of the Inland Revenue Ministry department in the Kharkiv region; Chairman of the State Tax Service Directorate in the Kharkiv region Lieutenant-General Denysiuk. Searches are also underway at homes and offices of the senior tax officials of other regions, including Odesa. In fact, the searches are underway in all firms involved in tax evasion and money laundering."