Property of Southern GZK transferred to tax lien: the story of a giant
14 May 2025 08:32
The property of the Southern Mining and Processing Plant Joint Stock Company has been transferred to a tax lien due to non-payment of a UAH 3.7 billion tax liability. The head of the State Tax Service, Ruslan Kravchenko, announced this on his Facebook page, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
Kravchenko reminded that the Supreme Court had ordered Southern GOK to pay additional taxes in this amount to the state budget.
“Over three years, the company paid UAH 29.8 billion in dividends to 12 Cypriot companies. However, the real recipients of the income were entities in the Netherlands, so there were no grounds for applying the preferential rate. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is currently ignoring the court’s decision,”
– Kravchenko wrote.
The head of the State Tax Service noted that the plant did not pay the debt within 10 days, which are allotted by the Tax Code for the voluntary fulfillment of a monetary obligation. Therefore, since the beginning of May, this debt has become a tax debt. The State Tax Service has already sent the debtor a letter demanding payment of the tax debt, a tax claim and made a decision to inventory the company’s property.
“Since the beginning of May, this debt has officially become a tax debt. The State Tax Service has already sent the debtor a letter demanding payment of the tax debt, a tax claim and made a decision to inventory the property. Based on the act drawn up and agreed with the taxpayer, the property was registered as a tax lien. If the debt is not paid, the property described in the tax lien will be sold to repay it,”
– Kravchenko clarified.
He also added that the debt is subject to a penalty of 120% per annum of the NBU discount rate.
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Background of Pivdennyi GOK and the tax dispute
Yuzhny GOK is one of the main producers of iron ore in Ukraine. The company is engaged in the extraction and enrichment of poor ferruginous quartzite to produce iron ore concentrate. The plant’s raw material base is represented by quartzite from the Skelevatske deposit located in the central part of the Kryvyi Rih iron ore basin.
At the end of 2007, Lanebrook Ltd. (which was previously the majority shareholder of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Evraz Group) acquired a 50% stake in Pivdennyi GOK from the Privat Group (Dnipro). Until then, the plant was controlled by Metinvest Group and the aforementioned Lanebrook Ltd. In 2018, Lanebrook Ltd. withdrew from the shareholding of Evraz Group, and in 2022, Evraz representatives were removed from the company’s supervisory board.
According to the YouControl system, today the main owners of Southern Mining and Processing Plant JSC are the Cypriot companies Zantest Limited (29.88% of shares) and Jantere Limited (59.76%). The ultimate beneficiary of the company is Rinat Akhmetov.
In 2017-2019, Pivdennyi GOK allocated UAH 23 billion to pay dividends at the expense of its 2013-2018 profit. Later, in 2021, the company paid its shareholders more than UAH 31.5 billion at the expense of the profits earned in 2017-2020.
In April 2025, the Supreme Court ordered Pivdennyi GOK to pay UAH 3.7 billion in taxes and fines to the budget for the misuse of tax benefits when paying dividends to Cypriot firms. In response to this decision, the press service of Southern GOK stated that the company acted in accordance with the regulations in force at the time of dividend payment in 2017-2019.
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