'We will take action' — Ukraine ramps up fight against illegal gas dealers with online chat bot
Ukraine’s economic law enforcement agency launched an online bot to help bust illegal gasoline traders as the agency tightens its grip on tax dodgers.
Members of the public, businesspeople, and journalists will be able to upload information about dodgy dealings in the fuel market to the a chat bot called StopShadowBot on the popular messaging app Telegram. Detectives from the Economic Security Bureau will use the tips as a starting point for investigations.
"This is an opportunity for anyone to report an illegal gas station. We want the community to help detect it," Economic Security Bureau chief Oleksandr Tsyvinsky told the Kyiv Independent on Feb. 16.
"We will take action," he said.
Tsyvisky took the reins of the bureau in August 2025 and vowed to stamp out Ukraine’s multibillion-dollar shadow economy as the cash-strapped country struggles to fill state coffers.
Since then, the bureau has ramped up raids on smugglers and illicit traders, particularly in the tobacco, alcohol, timber, and electronics sectors.
The illicit fuel market is a growing problem in Ukraine, with detectives seizing fuel and equipment worth over Hr 250 million ($5.8 million) from illegal circulation last year — three times more than in 2024, the bureau wrote in a statement on Feb. 13.
Detectives shut down 76 illegal gas stations in 2025 and a further 22 in January this year. As a result, revenues from legal fuel sales rose by more than Hr 23 billion ($532 million), increasing from Hr 380.4 billion ($8.8 billion) in 2024 to Hr 403.5 billion ($9.3 billion) in 2025.
This means safer fuel for citizens and more tax revenues for the state to cover defense, medicine, and social programs, deputy director of the bureau Pavlo Buzdyhan told Ukrainian media on Feb. 13.
The bureau’s recent success is down to its new approach, Buzdyhan said. Instead of just recording individual violations, detectives analyze the whole scheme, from the fuel’s origin, transportation, storage, and the movement of funds.
Currently, there are 102 ongoing investigations, 47 court cases, and 33 indictments related to illicit fuel sales, Tsyvinsky wrote on Facebook on Jan. 30.
"The goal in 2026 is to end the sad history of illegal gas stations as a systemic phenomenon," he added.
