The State Fiscal Service has carried out more searches of IT companies to investigate the conversion of money into cash.

Deputy Chairman of the State Fiscal Service Serhiy Bilan wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday that the money was converted under the guise of the purchase and sale of currency, raw materials and shares of companies on virtual markets.

The organizers of the fraud created a scheme, in which several companies were involved, in particular, so-called "buffer" companies. The money was then sent to the accounts of companies which have the signs of fictitious operations with false directors, he said.

"Unfortunately, now the organizers of conversion centers more often use IT technologies and attract companies operating in this area to their operations," Bilan said.

He gave the formation of the fictitious tax credit by companies of the real economic sector via the purchase of software at the increased prices as an example.

"For example, one of the companies bought software to monitor and analyze sales of goods at a price which is several thousand times exceeds its real cost," he said, adding that in this case the company formed the tax credit of several millions of hryvnias.

Bilan said that the State Fiscal Service would fight against these operations.

"I want to say that this does not concern the pressure on companies which operate transparently and in the law field," he said.

AIN.UA publication reported on Tuesday that searches were carried out by the State Fiscal Service at M IT Company and Lucky Labs on Tuesday. The representatives of the service said they were looking for information about Forex-trend company.

State Fiscal Service Head Roman Nasirov said at a press conference on Wednesday that court rulings were issued for all the searches.

"All the searches were conducted under Ukrainian law, the relevant court permits were received, and the most of issues concern the counterfeit transactions of 2013-2014," he said.

Director of the IT Ukraine association that unites over 40 companies, Viktor Valeyev, expressed alarm at the statements of the State Fiscal Service top managers.

"We're alarmed with the statement of Bilan regarding the lawfulness of conducting searches in the IT sector by the State Fiscal Service. Only last year IT companies paid taxes of UAH 3 billion. The IT sector is third in terms of the contribution to the country's GDP after agriculture and the metal sector," he said.

Valeyev said that according to Ukrainian law, representative offices and branches of foreign companies (and the major part of IT companies is these companies) are not obliged to register profit in Ukraine.

"Nevertheless, we see statements that are not in line with Ukrainian law. If relations of authorities with IT business continue be in the form of fighting, but not dialog and cooperation, we are at risk of losing the IT industry for the economy of our country," he said.

He said that the sector is ready for constructive dialog with public authorities and to draw up decisions that would help to develop the IT sector.