Ukrainian IT professionals launch an internet initiative Blockchain Ukraine to resist aggressive behaviour of tax authorities towards the IT sector.

The group's Facebook page lists police raids taken place in Ukrainian IT companies since July, resulting in confiscation of expensive hardware. The group will gather in one register all cases of police searches in IT companies, with the help of lawyers and journalists.

After featuring in TV programme Shuster.Live last week, the activist of Blockchain Ukraine Michael Chobanian, who is also the founder of Bitcoin Foundation Ukraine, was offered a meeting with the head of Cyber Crime Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who promised to return all confiscated items. The activists also arranged a meeting with the head of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeria Gontareva to discuss bitcoin. The round table for businesses and entrepreneurs on the problem of IT industry's vulnerability to governmental violence will be organised on Tuesday, 10 November.

One of the entrepreneurs who suffered from the authorities' actions, Andrey Stepanenko from 24nonStop, said that his company has served over 6 mln Ukrainians throughout the country for 7 years with more than 6,500 payment terminals. The authorities initiated a suit against the company's collaborators in July 2014, claiming that they had taken part in financing terrorism. The company's terminals were located on the Eastern Ukraine territories engaged in military conflict. The National Bank of Ukraine suggested that people who used the terminals also paid tax to the separatist military groups in control of the region.

As CoinFox reported earlier, Ukrainian officials wanted to block financing the separatist movement in Donetsk in March 2015. Security specialists from Kiev claimed that former aides of Viktor Yanukovich used bitcoin to support the pro-Russian side of the conflict.

Sonya Belova