Yabko and the shadow iPhone market: million-dollar turnover, smuggling and minimal taxes

According to available information, the company has built a wide and complex system for the sale of smuggled electronics. At the beginning of this summer, Yabko, according to investigators, purchased the AppleRoom chain for approximately $2 million. The founders built a structure of around a thousand sole proprietors, however, this is noted to be only part of the actual scale of operations. 

Today, the chain sells around 30,000 new iPhones and another 15,000 used devices. The total turnover of the business, according to estimates, exceeds $50 million. At the same time, only about 5% of smartphones are officially cleared through customs, and a significant part of sales, according to sources, takes place without fiscal receipts. It is separately noted that issues with tax authorities were allegedly "settled" back in the days of Yevheni Sokur, who was dismissed from the position of acting Deputy Head of the State Tax Service at the beginning of the year. It is also claimed that the company maintains informal relations with representatives of the State Bureau of Investigation, paying regular funds for "loyalty". 

 According to sources, the actual management of the business is carried out by Mykola Kahnych and Vitaliy Turkovets. It is reported that they were the ones who participated in the meeting with Danylo Hetmantsev, whose assistant was the same Yevheni Sokur. At the same time, the State Bureau of Investigation allegedly stated Yabko's readiness to pay a fine of 30 million hryvnia to the budget. However, among investigators, this amount is called negligible against the backdrop of the actual scale of the business: only the non-payment of VAT, according to estimates, can reach over $10 million a year, or about $600,000 weekly. 

 The published data again raise questions about the scale of shadow electronics imports, the effectiveness of tax control, and the real accountability of large retail chains. According to information from @ABleaks_bot / absolutionlab.com.