The Tax Service has been inspecting Concord Bank for more than a year: the delay in the process raises questions

The State Tax Service has been unable to complete the audit of Concord Bank, which is in the process of liquidation, for more than a year. The duration of this audit indicates a deliberate delay in the process and raises serious concerns about the efficiency of the tax authorities . The question arises whether the officials will be held accountable for the expenditure of public resources and whether law enforcement officers will check their actions for malice, UNN writes.

On August 1, 2023, the National Bank decided to revoke Concorde's license . After that, in accordance with the bank's liquidation procedure, a liquidator from the Deposit Guarantee Fund was appointed. In addition, the State Tax Service launched a tax audit.

The first audit lasted three months and resulted in an act worth 700 thousand hryvnias. However, according to the co-owner of Concord Bank Olena Sosiedka, "on the personal instruction of the head of the Verkhovna Rada Tax Committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, UAH 392 million was illegally added to this report." The bank's liquidator disagreed with this  audit report and filed his objections to the document. After that, an additional audit was ordered, which is still ongoing.

Tax audits are a necessary part of control over the activities of banking institutions, including those in the process of liquidation. However, in the case of Concorde, a lot of questions arise due to the length of the tax audit. Under normal circumstances, the audit of a financial institution in liquidation should have been completed in a shorter time frame. 

According to lawyer Serhiy Lysenko, a tax audit should not take so long.

This is not a tax audit. According to the Tax Code, no tax audit lasts that long. Neither documentary nor on-site... According to the rules, a tax audit lasts up to a month

The lawyer emphasized that such a delay in the audit should be followed by an appropriate reaction from the management of the State Tax Service or the court.

The fact that the tax authorities have not yet drawn up an audit report on Concorde may indicate that they are deliberately delaying the process. Presumably, they realize that they violated the law during the first tax audit by charging the bank an absurd fine, and are now doing everything possible to delay the completion of the additional audit, and thus bringing them to justice for their illegal actions, as long as possible.

However, it should not be forgotten that the tax service is financed from the state budget, and conducting audits requires significant financial and human resources. Therefore, when an audit is delayed without justified reasons, it becomes a burden for the country's budget, which puts additional pressure on public finances.

In the case of Concorde, it turns out that the tax authorities have been receiving funds for a year for an audit that they probably have not been conducting. 

It is worth noting that at the time of the bank's liquidation, it was profitable and had sufficient funds to complete the process quickly. Therefore, the Deposit Guarantee Fund managed to pay out funds to 9 lines of depositors and creditors of Concorde in record time. However, delays on the part of the tax authorities may undermine the effective work of the Fund and have a negative impact on its achievements.

This raises the question of whether state resources are being used efficiently and whether officials will be held accountable for delaying the process.

Recall

The reason for the NBU's decision to revoke Concorde's license was the bank's alleged systematic violation of the requirements of the legislation on preventing and combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds of crime, terrorist financing, and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Although, as it turned out later, even state-owned banks, including Ukrgasbank, are engaged in misdirection (changing the purpose of payment in a bank acquiring network, usually associated with gambling operations) in Ukraine. However, the NBU fined it only UAH 60 million for this violation. The same as Oschadbank, Sense Bank, FUIB, and many others over the past year. They also received fines ranging from UAH 150 thousand to UAH 10 million.

But Concorde, which had not had any comments from international payment systems Mastercard and Visa during its operation, was deprived of its banking license. And this is despite the fact that 8 months before the NBU's decision to revoke its banking license , the bank turned off acquiring and continued to be profitable, which indicated that it was not dependent on interchange - it was not the main part of its income. Concorde shareholders consider this decision of the regulator unfair.

They appealed to the court against the NBU's actions, and the first instance sided with them. In particular, the Dnipropetrovs'k District Administrative Court declared unlawful and canceled the decision of the National Bank of Ukraine to revoke the license and liquidate Concord Bank. However, Ukrainian legislation is written in such a way that even despite a court decision on the illegal liquidation of a banking institution, it is impossible to return it to the market.