A Ukrainian airline leases an aircraft from a foreign lessor — just as it leases an office or a truck. For decades, this was considered a standard leasing transaction. But as of 2024, investigators from the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) decided that this is not equipment rental, but royalty payments — payments for the use of intellectual property, a patent, or copyright. The difference in interpretation costs businesses an additional 15% tax on each payment to a non-resident.
The Ukrainian News Network asked the Bureau of Economic Security which legal norm supports this position. They received no answer. Instead of an explanation, there was a reference to Article 222 of the Criminal Procedure Code regarding the secrecy of pre-trial investigation.
Five companies, six cases, zero explanations
The Bureau confirmed four criminal proceedings opened in 2024–2025. According to the Unified Register of Court Decisions and the editorial office's own data, the companies involved in these cases are Ukraine International Airlines (MAU), Konstanta Airlines, Urga, N3Operations, Skyline Express, and Rosa Vtriv — essentially the entire notable segment of Ukraine's civil aviation fleet operating leased aircraft.
Notably, the BES did not mention the case against Urga in its response to the inquiry, although according to the editorial office's data, it is also under investigation. Journalists did not ask for company names or the names of individuals involved — only the legal basis for the qualification. The Bureau refused to explain even that, limiting itself to a general phrase about the risk of "premature disclosure of the subject matter and directions of the investigation."
"Disclosure of such information may negatively affect the completeness, objectivity, and effectiveness of the pre-trial investigation," the BES stated in its response.
The problem is that legal qualification is not a detail of the investigation that can be kept secret until a verdict. It is a public position of a state body that already affects the financial reporting, credit agreements, and operational decisions of dozens of companies, regardless of whether any of these cases ever reaches court.
Where did "royalty" come from?
The trail leads to an analytical article published in 2024 by the previous team of the State Tax Service. It introduced the idea of taxing transport leasing to non-residents as royalties. According to aviation industry participants, the documents underlying the criminal cases look as if they were written "carbon copy" — from that same article.
Meanwhile, the current State Tax Service has already inspected airlines on this matter — and found violations in only one case out of several. In other inspections, there were no claims regarding the taxation of leasing. The Ministry of Finance, in its response to the Ukrainian News Network's inquiry, recalled paragraph 3.2 of Article 3 of the Tax Code: if an international treaty ratified by the Verkhovna Rada establishes different rules than the Code, the treaty applies. And according to lawyers' assessments, double taxation avoidance conventions do not provide for qualifying aircraft leasing as royalties.
This reveals a disconnect between three government positions: the Ministry of Finance appeals to international treaties, the current State Tax Service generally finds no violations in inspections, while the BES builds criminal cases on analytics that the tax service itself later essentially fails to confirm through mass additional assessments.
Why this is not just an accounting dispute
According to state registry data previously analyzed by the Ukrainian News Network, 86% of aircraft operated by Ukrainian carriers are leased rather than owned. This means that the new qualification potentially applies to nearly the entire active aviation fleet of the country — at a time when the aviation industry is already working under restrictions due to closed airspace and surviving on international routes.
Lawyers interviewed by the Ukrainian News Network point out: automatic additional assessment of 15% without being tied to a specific international convention is at least a questionable legal construction. The Bureau could not provide a single example of when aircraft leasing was successfully qualified as royalty in Ukrainian practice since 1991 — meaning there is simply no established and consistent approach by this logic.
Criminal proceedings represent suspicion, not a verdict, and none of the named companies have admitted guilt. But the mere existence of six parallel cases against the market's major players already acts as an instrument of pressure, regardless of their eventual legal outcome.
The aviation association has already called on the Cabinet of Ministers to protect carriers from pressure through this new interpretation of leasing. The question remains open: will the Cabinet take on the political decision to officially distinguish between leasing and royalties, or will the BES continue to build criminal cases based on an analytical article that even the tax service has not endorsed?
