How law enforcement agencies profit from the ban on pornography in Ukraine

Every year, Ukrainians earn millions of dollars from porn production despite the fact that this content is prohibited. Who benefits from criminal liability for the creation and distribution of pornography, and how is the domestic porn industry structured?

What does state hypocrisy look like?

On the one hand, Ukraine is a large global porn market. The country ranks high in terms of porn views on the largest online platforms, which pay millions of hryvnias in taxes to the state budget.

On the other hand, the creation and distribution of pornography is a criminal offence. Every year, law enforcement agencies open more than a thousand cases under the relevant article of the Criminal Code, fining and imprisoning citizens. We are talking not only about porn models, but also about ordinary Ukrainians who ‘dared’ to photograph a part of their body and send such a photo to a loved one.

Responsibility for the creation and distribution of pornography was inherited by Ukraine from the USSR. Although the definition of ‘pornography’ has disappeared from domestic legislation, the state machine continues to produce hundreds of criminal cases, spending taxpayers’ money on this. Even the war, during which law enforcement agencies should have had other priorities, did not change the situation.

At the end of 2024, a bill to decriminalise pornography was registered in Ukraine for the second time in recent years. In December 2025, this document was supported by the Verkhovna Rada’s (Parliament of Ukraine) specialised law enforcement committee. However, not everyone is happy with its adoption. There is no political will for this at the highest level.

Who profits from the ban on adult content in Ukraine, and why are all Ukrainian OnlyFans models in danger because of Danylo Getmantsev’s (current Minister of the Finances of Ukraine) post on social media?

Who and how profits from porn in Ukraine

“It was in 2019. At that time, the cyber police searched my home under Article 301 (of the Criminal Code, ’Import, manufacture, sale and distribution of pornographic items)" – ET ("Economic Truth" edition - "Економічна правда"). Before that, they had been following me and listening in on my conversations.

During the search, there was a group of people, who grabbed me and pushed me face down on the floor.

They immediately said that if I didn’t want them to open a criminal case, I would have to pay a bribe of about $20,000. They threatened that if I didn’t agree, they would take all my property, I would have to pay the money and go to prison.

At that time, I was just starting out, I was inexperienced and ‘green’, so I agreed. I had to borrow the money from friends.

After that, they came to my girlfriend and demanded the same bribe. She also agreed, but then left the country and said she would never return.

I know many such stories. After the bribe is paid to keep the case from being opened, they put the girls on a ‘meter’: either you pay $500-1000 a month, or you leave the country," says ET model Sofia (name changed) from Pornhub.

Her story is not unique. While preparing this material, ET managed to talk to and obtain testimony from five other models who film or broadcast pornographic content. For each of them, interaction with law enforcement officers followed a typical pattern: pressure, an offer to ‘come to an agreement’, closure of the case (or an agreement with the investigation and a suspended sentence) and monthly payments for ‘protection’.

In some cases, this interaction ended with the girls unable to withstand the pressure and emigrating to EU countries, where there is no criminal liability for producing pornography.

“After the case was closed, I was offered four options: return to work at any webcam studio that pays the "roof; pay protection money myself; leave the country; or stop working in this industry.

I chose the second option, and they began to quote me various amounts. The first month was $1,200, the second was $1,400, and the third was $1,800. After the third payment, I decided to leave the country because I realised that this was not the limit," said webcam model Yevgeniya (name changed).

According to her, she paid the police $3,800 to close the criminal case. ‘The payment was made in cash, in dollars, in banknotes no older than 2003,’ the girl says.

In order to persuade models to ‘cooperate,’ law enforcement officers often resort to moral and even physical pressure: they blackmail and intimidate girls and restrict their freedom.

Porn actress Victoria (name changed) told about one such case. According to her, the police raided her apartment and demanded that she unlock her phone, which contained pornographic content. When Victoria refused, she was taken to the police station, where she was held for eight hours and threatened with ‘imprisonment’.

“They took me into some office, took my phone and demanded that I unlock it. I refused. Then they started pushing me, throwing me in one direction, then in the other. The door was open, people were walking along the corridor. They were watching and didn’t understand what was going on,” she recalls.

In order to "settle the situation", law enforcement officers asked Victoria for €10,000 – they announced this amount of bribe through her lawyer. She refused to cooperate and emigrated abroad.

Apparently, there is no single "price list" for closing criminal proceedings (or signing an agreement with the investigation with a subsequent suspended sentence) for participation in pornographic activities.

The amount of the payment may depend on the city, the status of the criminal proceedings, the ‘popularity’ of the porn model, the mood of law enforcement officers, and even the condition of the apartment being searched, according to several OnlyFans models who have faced police pressure to tell the ET. The monthly fee for not interfering with their activities is usually around $1,000.

Much larger payments for "coverage" have to be paid to the organized porn business. We are talking about various intermediaries between models and the platforms on which they post the created content. The most common such intermediaries in Ukraine are webcam studios and OnlyFans agencies.

The former are a historically more mature business that has been operating in Ukraine for many years. These studios provide models with premises and equipment for broadcasting mostly pornographic content on special platforms for a certain fee.

As a rule, such studios ‘cooperate’ financially with law enforcement agencies, says ET Igor (name changed), owner of one of Ukraine’s largest webcam studio networks (he also called himself ‘head of the webcam business union’).

“Each service (police department – ET) charges 1-1.5 thousand dollars per month for one small studio with seven to nine girls, depending on the city,” he says, adding that ‘kickbacks’ from studios are collected by the cyber police and the National Police’s anti-trafficking department.

OnlyFans agencies are a newer type of porn business, as the platform itself was only founded in 2016. These companies help models maintain their personal pages on OnlyFans and other social networks, create, advertise and promote content, and correspond with ‘fans’. It is difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect such agencies, as they usually do not have a physical office: all work is done remotely.

The number of such agencies is constantly growing. Just one job search platform offers over 4,800 vacancies in this field.

"I worked at an agency that had 50 profiles (models – ET). The monthly turnover there was very high – $1-2 million depending on the season. As a rule, the ‘kickback’ to law enforcement agencies is about 30% of this amount," Vlad (Влад), who recently opened his own OnlyFans agency, told ET.

According to him, the illegal status of pornography in Ukraine is beneficial not only to law enforcement agencies that ‘protect’ this business, but also to large porn agencies. “It is relatively cheap for them to negotiate “protection” and then turn in their competitors to the police, clearing the market for themselves,” he explained.

However, the role of law enforcement in the Ukrainian porn industry is not limited to providing legal cover. In some cases, they even initiate the creation of such businesses.

"After our webcam studio was closed, a man from the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine - СБУ / Слу́жба безпе́ки Украї́ни) (who participated in the searches) contacted me and said: ’We saw your accounts. You have very promising profiles. Let’s set up a studio, and we’ll provide you with protection. You will work, and we’ll agree on the amount.‘ We refused, but after a while OnlyFans appeared, and we started working independently,” OnlyFans model Anna told ET.

Taxes and punishments

In Ukraine, the production and distribution of non-child pornography is punishable by fines and actual prison terms. Punishment for such crimes is provided for in Article 301 of the Criminal Code:

• for the production or importation into Ukraine of pornographic works and images – a fine of 17-68 thousand UAH, probation or restriction of liberty for a term of up to three years;
• for the production, import, or distribution of pornographic videos – a fine of 34,000-85,000 UAH, restriction or deprivation of liberty for a term of up to five years;
• for a repeat offence or for the production and sale of pornography by a group of persons or in large quantities (worth more than 3.4 million hryvnias) – imprisonment for three to seven years and a ban on engaging in certain activities for a term of up to three years.

Criminal proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code are often registered not against professional porn models, but against ordinary citizens who, for example, post their nude photos and videos on dating sites or simply send them to their loved ones in private messages via messengers.

For example, such a decision was made in 2023 by the Novosanzharsky District Court of the Poltava Region. A fine of UAH 34,000 was imposed on a girl for sending two videos via messenger ‘which in a vulgar, naturalistic, cynical, indecent and unnatural form depict the sphere of sexual life – the display of naked genitals and masturbatory acts – the insertion of fingers into the genitals’ . There are many similar cases in the court register.

The situation is made even more interesting by the fact that Ukrainian legislation does not contain any definition of the term ‘pornography’. Previously, it was contained in the Law ‘On the Protection of Public Morality’ ("Про Захист Суспільної Моралі"), but it expired on 31 March 2023 with the entry into force of the Law ‘On Media’. However, this does not prevent law enforcement agencies from registering about a thousand cases each year for the creation and distribution of something that is not defined in the legislation.

After the start of the war, the number of offences registered under Article 301 of the Criminal Code decreased significantly, but in 2024, law enforcement agencies almost broke their own record, launching 1,647 investigations (only 18 fewer than in 2018).

The investigation of each such crime consumes considerable state resources: from "control purchases" of pornographic content using budget funds to conducting numerous expert examinations to confirm that the content created and distributed is pornography.

Despite the threat of criminal liability, Ukraine remains a major player in the global porn market, both in terms of content consumption and production.

According to one of the world’s most popular porn sites, Pornhub (owned by the Canadian company Aylo Global Entertainment Inc.), Ukraine consistently ranks among the top 20 countries in terms of traffic consumption.

At the end of 2023, the State Tax Service (STS) (Державна Податкова Служба - ДПС) even fined Aylo $5,543 for not paying the so-called Google tax. Justifying this decision, the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s tax committee, Danylo Getmantsev, referred to the significant consumption of pornographic content by Ukrainians and, accordingly, advertising sales, on which the company did not pay any taxes.

Ultimately, in May 2024, Aylo became a Value added tax (VAT) payer in Ukraine. The State Tax Service refused to say how much tax the company paid in 2024, citing the confidentiality of such information.

They also refused to name the amount of VAT paid by Fenix International Limited, which owns the OnlyFans service. However, the confidentiality of such data did not prevent Getmantsev from disclosing the amounts of taxes paid by the company when he still had direct access to the work of the State Tax Service. In 2023, the company paid $1.27 million in VAT to the budget.

Recently, taxes on pornography in Ukraine have been paid not only by platforms that host such content, but also by the individuals who create it. In particular, in 2024, the tax authorities received information about Ukrainian OnlyFans models for the first time and sent them ‘letters of happiness’ demanding that they pay tax.

In December 2024, Getmantsev reported that 350 OnlyFans models had declared UAH 305.4 million in income, paying UAH 59 million in personal income tax and military tax.

This story could have been another ‘victory’ for the MP in the fight against tax evasion, had it not turned into a real horror for taxpayers.

New ‘protectors’

"On 11 December, my husband and I were driving along the Zhytomyr highway. We were stopped at a checkpoint. There, a man in civilian clothes started breaking down the door of our car. He showed us his Economic Security Bureau ID and yelled at us. My husband just stepped on the gas and we drove away.

When we got home, we saw that our house had been searched. They took all my equipment, worth about 400,000 hryvnias. They showed me the court order. It said that I was accused of tax evasion. Although I had received a letter (from the State Tax Service) before that, they gave me 15 days to pay the tax, and I paid it,” says ’citizen K.," an OnlyFans model, to ET.

Getmantsev wrote about her under this name on Telegram in September 2024. He reported that ‘citizen K.’ had declared more than $3 million from her activities on OnlyFans (the exact amount of her income was $3.1 million for 2020-2022, and the amount of taxes paid is UAH 18 million).

Without realising it, Getmantsev not only caused the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) to search ‘citizen K.’’s home, but also likely broke the ‘social contract’ between the Ukrainian porn industry and the state. According to this agreement, porn models and companies agreed to corruption, and the state turned a blind eye to their existence.

This story began earlier, in July 2024. At that time, the BES conducted searches at one of the OnlyFans agencies, which was suspected of significant tax evasion. The investigation into this case continued, with law enforcement agencies conducting covert investigative activities. Until 11 September, when Getmantsev wrote the following.

“The tax office received information about Ukrainian citizens who create paid content on OnlyFans. The creation of paid content on the OnlyFans internet platform by Ukrainian citizens is growing rapidly. The number of accounts is increasing on average threefold every year,” the deputy noted.

It seems that the BES is closely monitoring Getmantsev’s social media accounts, because on 20 September, bureau employees went to court and, referring to the post by the head of the tax committee, requested that the State Tax Service provide information about Ukrainian creators on the OnlyFans platform as part of open proceedings concerning tax evasion by one of the agencies.

In their application, they asked the court to provide information not only about the models who worked for that agency, but about all Ukrainians who received income from OnlyFans. Surprisingly, the court granted such permission.

After receiving the information, the BES began conducting searches of Ukrainian OnlyFans models — primarily those who had no connection to the BES’s open case of tax evasion by one of the agencies.

“The BES began conducting searches of those who had paid and declared their income. That is, by order of the BES, it took a list from the State Tax Service and is now working on a list of OnlyFans models who have nothing to do with the case from July 2024,” said lawyer Lesya Mykhalenko (Леся Михаленко), who protects the interests of some of the models.

Although formally the search of ‘citizen K.’ was conducted under the article on tax evasion (which the girl had paid before), she suspects that law enforcement was interested in the presence of pornographic content. After all, when she was called in for questioning, the BES employees asked her specifically about the filmed content that was stored on the confiscated equipment, recalls ‘citizen K.’

The fact that the BES was interested in pornography, not tax evasion, is also evidenced by a second search conducted by law enforcement officers at the home of another model, ‘citizen S.’ (who, according to Getmantsev, received $4 million from the platform over several years). ‘Citizen K.’ warned her about the possibility of such searches, so the girl managed to delete all pornographic content. After that, law enforcement officers did not seize her equipment and property.

Neither ‘citizen S.’ nor ‘citizen K.’ had any connection to the OnlyFans agency, against which the BES had initiated proceedings. The girls assured ET that they work independently and without intermediaries. This information was confirmed to ET by the BES.

The ET asked the BES what was the reason for the searches of ‘citizen K.’ and ‘citizen S.’ and where law enforcement officers get the information about them, on the basis of which they conducted these searches. The department replied that the information about the girls was not obtained from the State Tax Service, but ‘during investigative actions’ (during which they did not specify). The tax data ‘only confirmed the information obtained by the detectives.’

They also reported that they did not open cases against the girls under Article 301 of the Criminal Code and did not conduct any investigative actions regarding the production of porn by OnlyFans models. The BES explained the words of ‘citizen K.’ that during the interrogation she was asked about the creation of content by saying that ‘the girl did not understand correctly.’

Anyway, after the publicity in the press, the BEB searches of the OnlyFans models stopped. The girls’ lawyers, as well as ET interlocutors in parliament, speak of an informal agreement on this with law enforcement agencies.

The question remains as to why the BES became interested in the activities of OnlyFans models. Is the bureau concerned about tax evasion from the production of pornography, or is this just a formal excuse to enter the ‘protection racket’ market for this activity?

Meanwhile, it is not only the BES that is interested in the porn business. In a conversation with ET, Igor, who calls himself the ‘head of the Ukrainian webcam business union,’ said that since the beginning of 2025, various law enforcement agencies have taken an interest in his studios’ activities, including criminal police investigators who usually investigate murders.

“With the submission of a bill to the Verkhovna Rada on the decriminalisation of pornography, we suddenly encountered significant challenges, as everyone wants to earn money at the last minute,” he explained. ET was unable to confirm cases of criminal police involvement in investigations into the production and distribution of pornography.

Whether this ‘campaign’ by law enforcement against the porn industry will be successful is a big question. After OnlyFans models paid taxes to the budget, they began to refuse corrupt ‘cooperation’ with law enforcement.

“During the searches, BES employees started saying, “Find yourself connections in the Shevchenkivskyi court”. So I have to pay millions of hryvnias in taxes to the Ukrainian budget, and I still have to give bribes to someone?” asks ‘citizen K.’ rhetorically.

Law enforcement against porn

On 11 November 2024, a bill to decriminalise porn was registered in the Verkhovna Rada for the second time. The document proposes to leave Article 301 of the Criminal Code in place and to provide for liability only for the distribution of porn among minors or coercing minors to participate in its creation.

The previous attempt to decriminalise pornography was made by MPs in the summer of 2023, but at that time the bill did not receive the necessary support, particularly among members of the relevant law enforcement committee.

This time, the law enforcement committee has come out in favour of decriminalisation. However, this does not guarantee that the bill will be passed. According to sources in the Verkhovna Rada, there are currently not enough MPs who support the changes. In addition, the bill does not have support at the highest political level. ‘The president has not yet made up his mind,’ one of the sources told ET.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies have already rushed to criticise the bill. “If we take the position of the National Police and other law enforcement agencies, we do not support such an initiative. We have informed the Verkhovna Rada committee about this. This bill needs further refinement and directly contradicts some laws,” said National Police Chief Ivan Vyhivsky (Іван Вигівський).

According to him, the adoption of the bill, which leaves criminal liability for the distribution of pornography among minors, will lead to pornography ‘being accessible to minors.’ He also stated that the decriminalisation of pornography ‘will have a negative impact on moral values, especially those of children.’

“We have traditions of intimate communication between people, and therefore, in my opinion, such legalisation will have a negative result,” Vygivsky emphasised, without specifying what traditions he was referring to.

Similarly, the police chief said nothing about incidents in which his department’s employees exert pressure on porn models and the porn industry in order to obtain bribes. Therefore, ET submitted a request to the National Police. They reported that they were not aware of any abuse by employees of the department during the investigation of crimes under Article 301 of the Criminal Code, and that the National Police had not conducted any relevant checks or official investigations.

However, such investigations were conducted by other law enforcement agencies, in particular the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI). For example, in 2020, an inspector from the cybercrime department was detained there for extorting $5,000 from a citizen in exchange for not prosecuting him for producing pornography.

In 2021, the State Bureau of Investigation detained a police officer who ‘covered up’ the porn business of a resident of Odesa region and received 259,000 hryvnias from her between 2012 and 2021.

ET sent a request to the SBI asking how many cases of abuse of power by law enforcement officers during the investigation of pornography crimes had been opened there. At the time of publication, no response had been received.

* * *

The current criminal liability for the production and distribution of pornography has absolutely no effect on its consumption by Ukrainians or its production. The statistics speak for themselves.

The only tangible consequence of the current ban is that it allows certain law enforcement officials to provide pornographic content producers with legal cover in exchange for a steady stream of foreign currency income.

Under criminal liability, numerous webcam studios, OnlyFans agencies and other similar businesses operate completely illegally. As a result, models who dare to work with them find themselves defenceless against such ‘employers’ when their ‘working relationship’ turns into sexual exploitation.

Will law enforcement agencies, which are sometimes themselves interested in the stable operation of the porn business in order to receive ‘kickbacks’, be able to protect them?

If these are the ‘traditions of intimate communication between people’ that the state law enforcement and judicial systems are so eager to protect, then isn’t it’s time to finally change these traditions?

Text by Yaroslav Vinokurov (Ярослав Вінокуров)

Collage by Andriy Kalistratenko (Андрій Калістратенко)

Published on 22 January 2025 on the epravda.com.ua portal.