The Cabinet of Ministers on Feb. 1 dismissed the acting head of the State Customs Service, Viacheslav Demchenko, according to Cabinet sources cited by online newspaper Ekonomichna Pravda.
The Cabinet also fired Demchenko's deputies Oleksandr Shutsky and Ruslan Cherkassky and Tetiana Kiriyenko, acting head of the State Tax Service, according to sources cited by Yevropeiska Pravda and Forbes Ukraine.
David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People faction in parliament, also said on Telegram that the leadership of the State Customs Service would be fired.
On Jan. 31, law enforcement charged customs officials in the central city of Zhytomyr with organizing a corruption scheme that illegally imported foreign ambulances into Ukraine and cost the state more than $541,000.
On Jan. 3, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported that more than 10 high-ranking officials, including a deputy department head at the State Customs Service and leadership of the Odesa customs office, were involved in a corruption scheme in grain exports that cost the state $186 million in 2022 in unpaid taxes.
