Ivan Pavlik, General Manager of Asbis-Ukraine, said that the efforts of the BEB, tax and customs authorities have reduced the share of «gray» iPhones in Ukraine from 80% to 60%.
Ivan Pavlik, General Manager of Asbis-Ukraine, said that the efforts of the BEB, tax and customs authorities have reduced the share of «gray» iPhones in Ukraine from 80% to 60%.
Pavlik told this in an interview with Forbes Ukraine. In January 2026, he moved from the position of commercial director at Comfy to the position of general manager of Asbis-Ukraine, which is an authorized distributor of Apple gadgets on the Ukrainian market.
According to Ivan Pavlik, there is no so-called «gray» import of gadgets, and if a store sells goods without VAT and a fiscal receipt, this is a full-fledged «black» import. He pointed out that any company can officially import Apple or another brand to Ukraine, pay customs duties and VAT, and it will be an official product.
The general manager of Asbis-Ukraine noted that since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion, the share of «black» imports has been growing, as have the retail chains that deal with them.
«Since last year, the situation has started to change. And here we should thank the state — BEB, tax, customs. We see that the problem has been noticed. The share of „black“ iPhone imports is decreasing. If before it was about 80%, now it is 60%+. There is still a lot, but the trend is different,» says Ivan Pavlik.
He added that the total value of «black» Apple devices in Ukraine is about $1 billion.
We will remind you that at the end of February, journalist Yevhen Plinsky announced the seizure of contraband equipment in the logistics centers of the Yabko chain of stores in the Lviv region. According to him, during these measures, contraband equipment worth more than $100 million was seized from Yabko.
The company’s press service stated that this figure «is absurd in its scale,» because it is comparable to the amount of international aid that Ukraine receives.
It is also known that the Lychakiv District Court of Lviv adopted a number of decisions on the seizure of the property of the Yabko electronics store chain at the request of the Lviv Territorial Department of the Bureau of Economic Security (BEB). dev.ua investigated what exactly was seized.
