heads of six regional tax administrations

On Friday, the head of the State Tax Administration (STAU) Sergei Buryak fired the heads of six regional divisions that disrupted the implementation of the tax collection plan in the first quarter. However, the heads of three more guilty administrations retained their positions. This allowed experts to accuse Sergei Buryak of selective personnel policies. They do not rule out that the State Tax Administration will actively use the failure to meet planned targets as a pretext for layoffs.

The State Tax Administration Board, dedicated to the implementation of the tax collection plan in January-March 2008, ended in mass layoffs. The head of the department, Sergei Buryak, said that nine regional divisions violated the forecast indicators of the Ministry of Finance, which is why the budget did not receive UAH 368.4 million. According to him, the Volyn region fulfilled the plan by 76%, Zaporozhye - by 84%, Sumy - by 83%, Chernivtsi - by 92%, Lviv - by 94%, Nikolaev and Kherson - by 95%, Ternopil - by 96%, Ivano-Frankivsk - by 98%, although the amount of shortfall could be minimal. “In the Ternopil region, the shortfall is only UAH 1.5 million,” Mr. Buryak was indignant.

However, the heads of only six regional State Tax Administrations were fired. Mr. Buryak “offered to look for another place of work” to Ivan Kovalchuk (Zaporizhzhya Regional State Tax Administration), Mykola Ivashchenko (Sumskaya), Alexander Fishchuk (Chernivtsi region), Vitaly Khilyuk (Lviv region), Mykola Grinyuk (Ternopil region) and Mikhail Smachilo (Ivano-Frankivsk region). Most of those dismissed held these positions from 2005-2007, only Mr. Kovalchuk headed the Zaporozhye regional State Tax Administration in January 2008 (previously he was the first deputy head). At the district level, Sergei Buryak promised to fire another 50 tax officers, but the final list was not made public. “There was no political motivation in personnel decisions; they were made based on the results and professionalism of the leaders,” assured the head of the State Tax Administration. The dismissed tax officials could not be reached for comment on Friday.

At the same time, the heads of the Nikolaev, Kherson and Volyn regional State Tax Administrations - Anatoly Strashny, Anatoly Pirozhnikov and Vitaly Pekarchuk - retained their positions, although they did not meet budget targets. The first two were appointed back in 2005-2006, and only Mr. Pekarchuk was appointed recently, in February 2008. The press secretary of the head of the State Tax Administration Tamara Kutsay refused to comment on this fact, as well as information about applicants for vacant positions. As Kommersant has learned, the current head of the Rivne Regional State Tax Administration, Viktor Bashuk, is running for the position of head of the Lvov division. His place may be taken by First Deputy Anatoly Stashko. Stanislav Denisyuk, who heads the Kharkov Regional State Tax Administration, plans to improve the performance of the Zaporozhye region.

Experts call this kind of personnel policy selective. Analyst at the Center Razumkova Konstantin Kuznetsov believes that in this way Mr. Buryak “gets rid of people he dislikes.” And according to Vladimir Dubrovsky, senior economist at the CASE-Ukraine center, layoffs could help increase tax collection in the future: “This is being done to demonstrate to those remaining that they need to work better.” Mr. Kuznetsov is confident that if the criterion for assessing the work of the regional State Tax Administration is the implementation of plans, then in the second quarter there will be layoffs again. “If they continue to fire people like this, then in order to fulfill their plans, the heads of tax departments will increase pressure on small and medium-sized businesses,” says Alexandra Betliy, an expert at the Center for Economic Research and Political Consulting.

Natalya Kommersant-Nepryakhina

Sergei Buryak issued a leave of absence