Danylo Oleksandrovych Hetmantsev
Official biography
Born on March 26, 1978 in Kyiv
1995 — graduated from the Ukrainian Humanitarian Lyceum of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
1997 — started working at M.S.L. (state lottery), where he worked as a lawyer after graduation
2000-2006 — worked as an assistant at the Kyiv National University
2004 — Candidate of Law (Administrative Law and Procedure), defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Laws in the specialty 12.00.07 “Administrative Law and Procedure; Financial Law; Information Law” on the topic “Financial and legal obligation, problems of genesis, determination and essence”. Received a certificate of the right to practice law
2007-2013 — Associate Professor of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, later of Financial Law at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
2012 — Professor of the Department of Financial Law of the Kyiv National University
2016 — Member of the European Association of Tax Professors
2018 — joined the Academic Committee of the EATLP
2019 — elected as a Member of Parliament from the Servant of the People party, No. 20 on the list in the parliamentary elections. Chairman of the Committee on Tax, Customs and Financial Policy in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the IX convocation. He is a member of the team of experts and advisors to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Doctor of Law, Professor of the Law Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. President of the Association of Tax Advisors.
Author of more than 250 publications on financial law and taxation, including 10 books and scientific and practical manuals. Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Supreme Court.
Listed among the 100 Best Lawyers of Ukraine and recognized as one of the country’s leading lawyers in banking and finance, securities and stock market.
He is married to Olga Getmantseva. He has sons, Mykhailo and Ivan.
Hetmantsev became a part of the Servant of the People team at the invitation and patronage of Ruslan Stefanchuk, whom they have known for a very long time and who is the party’s ideologist.
Hetmantsev’s first, and not entirely successful, business experiment was with Loges LLC (lawyer), where he was a business partner of Oksana Antoshko, known for the fact that, according to the SBU, her daughter, former Constitutional Court judge Suzanna Stanik, transferred property worth more than UAH 12 million to her.
Hetmantsev also confirmed that he had studied in the same group as her son, the president of M.S.L., Heorhiy Lozhenko. The company’s activities were terminated, and Hetmantsev himself was the liquidator and signatory.
Compromising material
According to the YouControl analytical system, Danylo Oleksandrovych Hetmantsev was one of 8 members of M.S.L. LLC (gambling organization) founded on 28.09.1998.
Thus, in 2015-2017, the activities of lottery operators M.S.L. and Patriot were subject to a decision of the National Security and Defense Council, which resulted in President
President Poroshenko imposed sanctions on them, and the SBU, in turn, initiated criminal proceedings and conducted an investigation into the possible involvement of these companies in terrorist financing (Russian trace, Alfa Bank). However, as is usually the case with high-profile cases in Ukraine, no evidence was allegedly found, which led to the lifting of the NSDC sanctions in May 2018.
Despite the official position on M.S.L., the press confirmed the information that the scandalous Serhiy Pashynskyi and Vitaliy Khomutynnik (MP from the Party of Regions, former chairman of the Tax and Customs Policy Committees in all cadences, former chairman of the “Renaissance” parliamentary group, business partner of Ihor Kolomoiskyi in gas production) are involved in the activities of this organization.
As an expert in the gambling industry, Danylo Hetmantsev stated in September 2019 that there is no concept for the development of the Ukrainian lottery, as the main obstacle to the development of the lottery market is the management apparatus that has been in place since the Yanukovych presidency, i.e. people who are unable to think strategically and cannot fulfill the conditions necessary for the development of the lottery. Among these conditions, Hetmantsev singled out three main ones related to the development of unified licensing requirements for lottery representatives, examination of existing operators and issuance of licenses to those that meet the unified requirements, and, of course, clearing the market of unreliable, illegal suppliers. In other words, taking all measures to prevent the complete monopolization and usurpation of this market, provided that the moral qualities of the people involved in its organization are taken into account, and the people remain the same.
Hetmantsev’s interests and spheres of interaction can be clearly traced back to his legislative initiative. Thus, when the Law No. 128-IX “On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Use of Registrars of Payment Transactions in the Field of Trade, Catering and Services’ and other Laws of Ukraine on the De-shadowing of Payments in the Field of Trade and Services” was adopted in September 2019, he directly acted in favor of the business interests of Khomutynnik, who, in turn, has been an acquiring intermediary between cash registers and tax authorities since the days of Arbuzov and Klymenko.
A similar fact of lobbying for the interests of the “powers that be” is the almost lightning-fast reaction of Hetmantsev, who introduced draft law No. 1210 (hereinafter referred to as Law No. 466-IX) to the Verkhovna Rada in August 2019, in terms of a radical change in the tax base for mining and processing plants, after three days earlier (on August 27), during an interview with Censor, Ihor Kolomoisky spoke in favor of changing approaches to taxation of mining enterprises.
In response to these actions, many experts suggested that the implementation of draft law No. 1210 would result in the world’s highest tax burden on companies in this sector, which would lead to a deterioration in the conditions for processing ores, and the funds received from the collection of value added would be transferred outside the country. And in the current situation, in the face of changes in taxation systems, they have not changed only for Ordzhonikidze and Manganese GOKs controlled by Kolomoisky. And what is this if not a fact of political corruption… But the NABU did not even consider it necessary to honor this fact with its attention.
In general, this draft law caused a flurry of criticism from such prominent figures as Mykhailo Kukhar, senior economist at Ukraine Economic Outlook, Kateryna Glazkova, executive director of the Association of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs, Dmytro Ovcharenko, vice president for financial and legal affairs at IT Ukraine, and Dmytro Oliynyk, chairman of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, who recognized the law “On Amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine on Improving Tax Administration, Eliminating Technical and Logical Inconsistencies in Tax Legislation” and warned that it would lead to the destruction of small business and the building of socialism in Ukraine” as disastrous for small businesses, which provides for the introduction of cash registers for individual entrepreneurs.
Compromising material and rumors… Danylo Oleksandrovych joined the Servant of the People team at the invitation of Ruslan Stefanchuk, the party’s ideologist. Source. Danylo Hetmantsev had never met Volodymyr Zelenskyi personally before. In this team, Danylo Hetmantsev was entrusted with the direction of work related to the development of digitalization. The goal of the project was to bring Ukraine’s economy out of the shadows by conducting all tax procedures using only gadgets and with minimal or no involvement of real employees. This was supposed to speed up and simplify all operations related to payments and the use of cash registers.
The logical development of this direction was to be a project on paying taxes to one single account, but, according to media reports, this bill is already in parliament, but for all known reasons it is constantly blocked for consideration. Then there is the process of de-shadowing the economy, related to the general declaration of income of persons not related to the state budget, the issue of amending tax policy so that there is no pronounced fiscal bias, and so on.
But now the trends are different and there is no such course, for which Hetmantsev is responsible, among other things…
The high-profile status of Danylo Hetmantsev as the head of the Committee on Taxes, a lobbyist for fiscalization, a promoter of transparent relations between the state and private entrepreneurs, a “squeeze” of taxes from business… is lost when we mention the MP’s own tax payments, or rather, non-payment, as well as the facts of employee fraud and non-payment of salaries by members of the Hetmantsev family.
For example, the MP’s mother, Olena Hetmantseva, owns the TPG travel agency, which is legally supported by Jurimex, whose honorary president is Danylo Hetmantsev. Jurimex also published the Travel Professional Magazine, which was re-registered to another company in the spring of 2020. The employees and authors of this publication unofficially confirmed that they were paid in envelopes, and for the last issue they were not paid at all — they simply did not pay anyone anything. The employees were prevented from officially speaking out against the management by a non-disclosure agreement, which allowed the Hetmantsevs to avoid a scandal.
Thus, according to one of the former employees of the publication, using the quarantine situation, the management of Travel Professional Magazine appropriated all the articles prepared for the next issue of the publication, froze the issue of the magazine and dismissed the team of authors, while continuing to work and even receiving financial assistance from the state related to the quarantine. The deceived authors constantly see the results of their work on the publication’s website. Hetmantseva herself is not going to pay off her debt to former and current employees. Employees of the TPG tour operator also did not escape a similar fate.
Thus, at the stage when Hetmantsev was not an MP but was managing the Yurimex company, which served Travel Professional Group LLC, he created a system in which the authors of the magazine were forced to sign a contract where the remuneration was officially paid in the amount of UAH 100 per article, and taxes were also deducted from this amount. At the same time, the main amount of the fee was paid to employees in an envelope. And this went on for years… and the person responsible for such a scheme of calculation, tax evasion, depressed morale of employees and practically dictatorial conditions for them was and is one of the most qualified tax officers in Ukraine!
The authors of this publication also pointed out that, as a reviewer, Hetmantsev clearly gave in to his unbridled ambitions in favor of healthy criticism. The ambitions of the family and their attitude to their own importance are indirectly evidenced by the level of difficulty in accessing the office, which contained all kinds of codes and scanners and was compared by employees to a top-secret facility.
A photo from the Verkhovna Rada was published in the media showing Hetmantsev, the head of the parliament’s Finance Committee, in a correspondence with Yuriy Aristov, the head of the Budget Committee, speaking sexistly about his former subordinate. Discussing the candidate for the position of first deputy to Finance Minister Umansky, who was appointed the day before, Hetmantsev mentioned his colleague Nina Yuzhanina, who headed his committee in the Rada: “He wants to hire a woman who worked for Yuzhanina in my committee, whom I kicked out, as his first deputy.”
This phrase was interpreted as a biased attitude towards the candidate on the basis of gender, and it caused disapproval from the public.
Another impartial fact for Hetmantsev was the establishment of his cooperation and friendship with Vitaliy Khomutynnik, a member of the “Vidrodzhennya” party. As mentioned earlier, Hetmantsev is one of the co-founders of M.S.L., and after a series of journalistic investigations it became known that the lottery operator is informally controlled by two MPs — ex-regionalist Vitaliy Khomutynnik and no less scandalous “front-line” Serhiy Pashynsky. At the same time, Hetmantsev himself actually confirmed that the lottery operator had been operating in a “shadow mode” for many years, and with his tacit consent, since as one of the most knowledgeable people, Hetmantsev did nothing to remedy this situation: “Partly, perhaps, in the shadows, partly with the use of various schemes that lawyers had previously developed for him, it should be noted that these were absolutely legal schemes,” Hetmantsev commented on the situation with M.S.L. in an interview.
Danylo Hetmantsev’s income and property are listed in his declarations. For example, in 2015, Hetmantsev was listed as the owner of a 33.3% share of a 60m2 apartment in Kyiv, as well as 2 land plots in Krasylivka village (2090m2) and Kozliv village (2500m2). Among the expensive items he declared were Rolex and Franck Muller watches.
In 2015, Hetmantsev’s income amounted to UAH 142 thousand — salary at the Kyiv National University, UAH 8 thousand — salary at the research university, UAH 54 thousand — salary at Yurimex, UAH 1.5 thousand — royalties at ZN UA and UAH 4.5 thousand — fees at Silensia LTD. Danylo Hetmantsev keeps most of his earnings in cash: 40 thousand dollars and 55 thousand UAH. His bank accounts contain about 10 thousand UAH, 3 thousand dollars and 11 thousand euros.
Hetmantsev is also a beneficiary of 8 companies and a member of 6 non-governmental organizations.
According to the declaration for 2018, only Hetmantsev owned real estate, just like in 2015 — since 1997 he had the right to 33.33% of a 59.95 sq. m. apartment in Kyiv (66.67% belonged to his mother, Olena Hetmantseva), since 2005 — a 2090 m2 land plot in Krasylivtsi village, Brovary district, and since 2008 — a 2500 m2 land plot in Kozlove village, Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi district, Kyiv region.
Valuable property was also only his, in the form of the same Rolex and Franck Muller watches, as well as a collection of 15 paintings of the XX-XXI centuries.
Corporate rights in the form of 53% in Yurimex LLC (legal activities), 65% in Commercial Enterprise Yurimex LLC (legal activities), 2% in Kyiv Credit Union, 0.02% in M.S.L. LLC (gambling organization), 7.69% in Yurimex Attorneys at Law (legal activities). Hetmantsev also indicated that he was the ultimate beneficiary of Yurimex LLC and Commercial Enterprise Yurimex LLC. In addition, he declared that he is also a beneficiary of Professional Road Service LLC (organization of construction of structures), Special Road Service LLC (organization of construction of structures), Ukrainian Sports Union LLC (wholesale of office equipment and machinery), Belonaf LLC (consulting on commercial activities and management), and Yurimex Legal Group LLC (lease and operation of own or leased real estate).
In 2018, Hetmantsev received income of UAH 474 thousand — mostly salary and fees, while his wife received UAH 90 thousand in salary.
The declarant’s savings in the family’s bank accounts amounted to UAH 44 thousand, USD 1 thousand and EUR 11 thousand, as well as cash — UAH 55 thousand, EUR 40 thousand and USD 10 thousand. His wife kept $10,000 in cash.
In 2019, Hetmantsev’s declaration included his son Ivan and Hetmantsev’s mother Olena, who, accordingly, had a whole list of assets in Kyiv and the region.
In the reporting year, Mr. Hetmantsev completely divested himself of his corporate rights.
Since 2009 and 2016, respectively, Olena Hetmantseva has owned two land plots of 2500 m2 each in Kozlove village, Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi district.
Since 2012, she has owned apartments in the village of Chaiky, Kyiv-Svyatoshynskyi district, with the area of 76.3m2 and 60m2, as well as a land plot of 4421m2 in the village of Kopylove, Makarivskyi district.
Since 2013, Ms. Hetmantseva has owned a residential house of 269.6m2 (which she granted to her son Danylo Hetmantsev and his family), land plots of 482m2, 2500m2 and since 2016 — 210m2 in Velyka Motovylivka village, Fastiv district, as well as an apartment of 32.9m2 in Irpin.
Since 2016, Olena Hetmantseva has owned an apartment in Kyiv of 46.9m2 and land plots of 3251m2, 1680m2 and 820m2 in Tarasenky village, Fastiv district.
The declaration also states that New Properties LLC, 99.9% owned by Olena Hetmantseva, has owned non-residential premises in Ivano-Frankivsk with an area of 6m2, 17.9m2 and 61m2 since 2010, and 49m2 and 14m2 since 2011.
Since 2012, the company has owned non-residential premises of 31.9m2 in Poltava and 50.9m2 in Chernihiv.
Since 2014, the company has owned a land plot of 115.7m2 and an apartment of 50.8m2 in the village of Chaiky, Kyiv-Svyatoshynskyi district.
The declarant’s son, Ivan Hetmantsev, owns the right to use a 79.7m2 apartment in Kyiv, which has been owned equally by Tetiana Hetmantseva, Serhii and Valentyna Zasepskyi since 1995.
Since 2009, Olena Hetmantseva has owned a 2009 Toyota AVALON, which she granted to her son Danylo Hetmantsev the right to use. In addition, since 2009, she has owned a TOYOTA LAND CRUISER PRADO, made in 2008, and since 2018 — a TOYOTA LAND CRUISER, made in 2018.
Olena Hetmantseva has owned corporate rights since 2008 — 100% in Budservice Housing Company (leasing of own or leased property, wholesale trade; she is the head of the company), since 2012 — 99.9% in New Properties LLC (leasing of own or leased property, wholesale trade), since 2015 — 50% in Texlink LLC (software publishing), since 2017 — 63% in Travel Professional Group LLC (activities of travel operators), since 2017 — 50% in TRAVEL PROFESSIONAL GROUP TURKEY TURIZM TIC. TAS. ITH. IHR. LTD. STI.”, registered in Turkey (ind. number 8590654945), since 2019 — 75% in Travel Professional Group LLC (activities of travel operators).
In addition to the above companies, Olena Hetmantseva is a beneficiary of Yurimex Online LLC (computer programming), Belona LLC (consulting on commercial activities and management), Special Road Service LLC (organization of construction of facilities (previously Danylo Hetmantsev was a beneficiary there)), Professional Road Service LLC (organization of construction of structures (previously beneficiary was Danylo Hetmantsev)), Legal Group Jurimex LLC (leasing of own or leased property (previously beneficiary was Danylo Hetmantsev)), Travel Professional Group Uzhhorod LLC (activities of travel operators), T. P.G. (Thailand) Company Limited, registered in Thailand (reg. number 0205551004951), Go2Greece Ltd, registered in Greece (reg. number 117659027000), Travel Professional Group Kazakhstan LLC, registered in Kazakhstan (reg. LLC, registered in Cyprus (reg. number HE 341325), TPG TOUR OPERATOR (EUROPE) LTD LLC, registered in Poland (reg. number HE 341325), Travel Professional Group Poland Sp. z o.o. LLC, registered in Belarus (reg. number 193255093).
Olena Hetmantseva has 11 trademarks registered as intangible assets.
But let’s get back to Danylo Hetmantsev. According to the results of 2019, he received UAH 817 thousand of income: UAH 413 thousand — salary at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, UAH 21 thousand — salary of a part-time employee at the Research Institute of Intellectual Property, UAH 125 thousand — salary of a part-time employee at Yurimex LLC, UAH 4 thousand — royalties from ZN UA LLC, UAH 169 thousand — deputy salary, UAH 22 thousand — tuition fees from the Servant of the People party, UAH 50 — royalties from Folio LLC, UAH 52 thousand — alienation of securities, UAH 9 thousand — alienation of corporate rights in favor of Olena Hetmantseva.
Olena Hetmantseva, in turn, received UAH 1 million 470 thousand, in particular, UAH 250 thousand — salary in Travel Professional Group LLC, UAH 10 thousand — lease of property to Yurimex LLC, UAH 1 million 31 thousand — alienation of real estate, UAH 600 — lease of property to Travel Professional Group LLC, UAH 1 thousand — medical insurance. UAH 1 thousand — medical insurance in Travel Professional Group LLC, UAH 24 thousand — social assistance, UAH 55 thousand — social assistance from Travel Professional Group LLC, UAH 88 thousand — pension, UAH 9 thousand — from the alienation of corporate rights.
Danylo Hetmantsev kept his savings in bank accounts — UAH 184 thousand and USD 133, UAH 287 thousand, EUR 40 thousand and USD 35 thousand. His current wife, Olha Hetmantseva, kept UAH 3 thousand in the bank and $10 thousand in cash.
His mother, Olena Hetmantseva, had UAH 1 million 169 thousand, USD 124 thousand, and EUR 34 thousand in her bank accounts by the end of 2019. She kept $228,000 in cash and indicated that she had lent $650,000 to third parties.
Hetmantsev listed as intangible assets the right to 50% of two (2009 and 2010) trademarks for goods and services.
In October 2019, the SAPO registered criminal proceedings on allegations of alleged bribery of $30,000 each by MPs from the Servant of the People party who are members of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxes and Customs Policy. The reason is that on October 18, the committee failed to pass the draft law No. 2047 on amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine to eliminate corruption in the field of registration of information from real estate valuation reports.
“The entire Golos faction voted in favor of the bill. “The Servants of the People gave only five votes… The rest of the faction members voted against or abstained. I consider this decision a mistake that is difficult to explain.” Hetmantsev called this decision of the people’s deputies a mistake that is difficult to explain.
In response to the situation, the President’s Office strongly recommended that members of the Servant of the People faction who voted against the draft law (11 people) take a polygraph test, which resulted in the first to take the test, which was taken by Deputy Chairman of the Committee Oleksandr Dubinsky, followed by Committee member Olha Vasylivska-Smahliuk, who was later voluntarily joined by the head of the faction, David Arakhamia, on his own initiative.
Among the MPs who refused to take the polygraph test was one of the old-timers of the Parliament (VI-VII convocations from 2007 to 2019), Anton Yatsenko, who is accused of corruption schemes in real estate valuation and who was known as one of the “godfathers of the Tender Chamber” about ten years ago.
In one of his interviews, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky mentioned corruption schemes in real estate valuation. Addressing the issue of possible involvement of former acting head of the SPFU Vitaliy Trubarov, former MPs Vitaliy Khomutynnik and Anton Yatsenko in the “brazen thieving scheme” of property valuation, the illegal income from which amounted to “3-4 million hryvnias per day,” the oligarch said: “collecting a billion hryvnias a year on this is robbery… it turns out to be tender chamber No. 2.”
In May 2020, Yuriy Havrylechko, co-founder of the Ukrainian Thought Factory, expressed the opinion that the consideration of the draft law on the regulation of the gambling market in Ukraine reveals a “special Ukrainian way” lobbied by a lottery pool of MPs, led by the head of the Verkhovna Rada committee Danylo Hetmantsev, who “removed himself” from the process of legalizing the gambling business.
Havrylechko believes that the goal of the “special Ukrainian way” is to make the future domestic gambling market narrow and inadequate in the eyes of foreign investors, thereby preserving the role of the current monopolies.
Another issue arose around the “banking law”. In May 2020, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Finance Committee Dubinsky called on MPs to cancel the results of the vote on the so-called “law on banks” No. 2571-d due to the allegedly inappropriate procedure for considering the bill by the Verkhovna Rada Finance Committee, headed by Hetmantsev, and introduced draft No. 2571-d-P1. The adopted law explicitly prohibited the return of nationalized banks to their former owners, even if the court ruled the nationalization illegal, and was openly contrary to the interests of the Privat group. In this initiative, Dubinsky was fully supported by non-partisan MP Anton Polyakov, who also recognized that the law was adopted in violation of the regulations and filed a lawsuit with the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
In November 2020, due to the lack of a common position among groups and factions, the Verkhovna Rada failed to pass a bill that would have exempted individual entrepreneurs who pay the single tax from the obligation to use payment transaction registers (PTRs) by the end of next year. As a result, clashes between security forces and entrepreneurs who opposed the introduction of cash registers once again occurred near the parliament building.
At the end of November 2020, a group of 36 MPs registered a draft resolution No. 4393 to dismiss Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Taxation, and Customs Policy, “due to unsatisfactory performance.” The explanatory note to the draft resolution states that during his tenure as Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, allegedly in the national interest of improving the administration of taxes and fees, repeatedly promoted decisions that significantly increased the fiscal burden on small and medium-sized businesses.
On November 18, 2020, as an alternative, Hetmantsev introduced his very shocking draft resolution No. 4402, the content of which concerns the self-recall of his candidacy and a request for his dismissal from his position: “To recall Danylo Oleksandrovych Hetmantsev… since his continued activities in drafting laws of Ukraine on taxation are aimed at stopping illegal tax evasion schemes and causing harm to many important people, and therefore makes it impossible for him to fulfill his duties.”
This is the right comment for such a reaction: “The best defense is an offense”.
Summary
In the course of his business and political activities, Hetmantsev’s family accumulated material wealth that was exorbitant for his status and occupation.
As a result of Hetmantsev’s legislative initiative, the relationship with certain pro-government structures and odious personalities can be clearly traced, which only change the “labels” and the wrapper, but in reality, Ukrainian citizens get the same situation with the same participants and the same results.