Black bookkeeping company arrested in Odesa in smuggling case

In Odesa, a suspected smuggling of industrial equipment through customs was exposed. The clue in the case was an ordinary notebook with black accounting, which can now help unravel the scheme.

This was reported by Intent with reference to the ruling of the Khadzhybey District Court.

According to the BES in Odesa region, it was a case of smuggling through customs of equipment that was not declared in the accompanying documents and had no factory markings.

The incident occurred back on December 10, 2025, at the Reni-Gyurdzhylesht checkpoint in the area of operation of Odesa Customs. During the inspection of a truck carrying almost 9.5 tons of industrial equipment with electric heating, customs officers found undeclared machines. According to the case file, they contained the remains of tobacco raw materials and finished tobacco products.

The documents listed the Polish company PL SENS-TRADE Spolka as the sender and the Ukrainian Optonline LLC as the recipient. At the same time, investigators claim that the documents may have contained false information to conceal the true nature of the cargo during import.

During the interrogation, the director of the recipient company said that the actual customer of the goods was the founder of the private enterprise Zakhid. In addition, a man could have been involved in organizing the scheme, using controlled persons and executives of importing companies to attempt to illegally move goods across the border.

In April 2026, law enforcement officers searched the residence of the founder of Zakhid PE. There, they seized a blue notebook with the inscription "2022," which contained records of foreign economic activity and draft notes. The detectives recognized it as material evidence.

The court agreed with the arguments of the prosecutor's office and the BES that the seized notebook could be of evidentiary value, be the subject of examinations and help establish the circumstances of a possible crime. As a result, the notebook was arrested.

As Intent found out, in January, a long-running case regarding the disappearance of a large batch of smuggled cigarettes that were material evidence in a criminal proceeding ended in Odesa. It was about more than 3.7 million packs of cigarettes worth USD 587 thousand that disappeared from the warehouses after being seized at Odesa Customs.

The key defendants in the case were former Odesa police chief Dmytro Holovin, his deputy Kostiantyn Heiko and directors of private companies.

Анна Бальчінос