New tobacco scheme by Kaufman and Stakovychenko: official sales and illegal cash?

New tobacco scheme by Kaufman and Stakovychenko: official sales and illegal cash?

Borys Kaufman Breaks into the Illegal Cigarette Market. 

At least, this is how the appearance of cigarette brands from manufacturers suspected by the BES of producing counterfeit products can be interpreted in the price lists of the tobacco distributor-monopolist DL Solution, controlled by him.

At this stage, only official brands from the Ternopil factory have appeared in Borys’s sales line, but negotiations with another factory are expected to be completed soon.

Well, and then the BES-busted Goshcha will catch up. How could it be otherwise without them?

As I already mentioned, for now, we are talking about brands that are officially registered with these factories, but we understand where this cooperation is headed.

Underpinning such distribution with duty-free counterfeit or excise-free goods is a matter of technique, time, and desire.

And there is definitely a desire.

The tobacco market is always about money, and the illegal tobacco market is about very large sums of money, usually in the form of cash collected for conversion centers through tobacco scheme operations.

This is precisely why, and I wrote a separate post about this, Boris Kaufman and his ’cashing’ partner Ihor Stakovichenko (a converter nicknamed ’Stakan’) acquired the tobacco distributor ’Volyntabak.’

As my sources assure, it was and is planned to channel part of the distribution through Volyntabak based on F2 (for cash without documents) and outright counterfeit.

Meanwhile, DL Solution is supposed to remain in the maximum white area of distribution.

I don’t know if it’s our backlight or something else, but so far I haven’t heard that counterfeit sales started from ’Volyntabak.’

However, brands began to appear in DL Solution’s price lists, and a certain LLC ’Aktiv Sales Group’ started working actively with counterfeit on F2, which is considered to be closer to Stakovychenko than to Kaufman but is part of their tobacco cooperative.

I repeat, the task of this tandem is extremely simple and clear.

Under the challenging conditions of the ongoing battle between law enforcement and MPs with the illegal cigarette market, ensuring a security umbrella to bring their activities under their control.

The manufacturer’s task is simplified to the minimum – to produce cigarettes.

Further down the chain – logistics, distribution to the final implementers, and cash collection from points – is Kaufman’s business.

’Stakan’s task is to implement this cash with a market markup from 2%.

Well, and to minimize risks, all this shadow activity will be intertwined with the large and transparent distribution of DL Solution.

But there’s one question.

How will the global cigarette manufacturers react to all this, who on one hand are trying to fight the illegal cigarette market in Ukraine and on the other will be side by side in the price lists of Borys with those they are fighting with?

Perhaps, if Kaufman really wants to control the illegal market, he should be left with just that?