Cigarette manufacturers that lost their licences in 2024

Recently, Ekonomicheskaya Pravda published a list of cigarette manufacturers that lost their production licences in 2024 due to involvement in the illegal production and distribution of tobacco products.

According to EP, the following companies lost their licences:

• LLC "Ukrainskoye Tyutyanovoye Proizvodstvo"
• LLC "Mestnaya Proizvodstvennaya Gruppa" (LLC "Tabaco Dim")
• LLC "Imperiya Tabak LTD"

At first glance, this is good news, especially considering that the first entry on the list is a factory in Hoshcha, Rivne Oblast, which is well-known far beyond Ukraine's borders. The loss of its licence is indeed a significant event.

However, upon closer inspection, the information proved to be somewhat inaccurate.

In 2024, four factories actually lost their licences:

1. In June 2024 — LLC "Orion Tabacco", which is considered to be under the control of Vadim Alperin (as I wrote previously).
2. In July 2024 — LLC "Imperiya Tabak LTD" from Odesa.
3. In November 2024 — Kyiv-based LLC "Mestnaya Proizvodstvennaya Gruppa", which is linked to the well-known money launderer Yuriy Karfik. This is the renamed LLC "Tabaco Dim".

The situation regarding the licence of the Vinnitsa factory is a separate story — it is a real detective case. However, the factory in Hoshcha, which is linked to the "Monakovtsy" group and Vladyslav Helzin, is not on the list of those deprived of licences.

It is important here to properly coordinate the work of the Tax Service and the BEB. Without the results of BEB expert examinations, the State Tax Service has no grounds for such decisions.

The question of where counterfeit products are again entering the market also remains open.