October 3 offshore information of 330 officials and politicians from 90 countries, including 35 leaders, 130 billionaires, arms dealers, pop stars and international criminals. The Pandora Papers include ministers, mayors, ambassadors, generals, bankers, presidential advisers, and presidents themselves. The investigation was conducted by 600 journalists from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists from 117 countries. Read today in USA.ONE magazine:
Pandora Papers opened "offshore crate"
It has the most Ukrainian politicians, and Volodymyr Zelensky is no exception.
What is Pandora Papers?
It took ICIJ journalists 2 years to process 2.9 TB of information on 11.9 million offshore documents. They felt that their investigation into the financial frauds of politicians from all over the world opened a Pandora's box, hence the name — Pandora Papers. Journalists shared documents spanning 50 years with 150 media partners, launching the most global collaboration in the history of journalism. In particular, they contain information about more than 29 thousand beneficial owners, which is 2 times more than the offshore owners identified 5 years ago during the Panama Papers investigation.
Thanks to Pandora, 6.4 million documents, 3 million images, over a million emails and about half a million spreadsheets have become known. It is not clear who became the source of the leak, but it is reported that this is the data of 14 offshore registrar companies located in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, Panama, UAE, Belize, Switzerland and Singapore. Among the 336 politicians convicted of financial fraud, most of all Ukrainian — 38. According to ICIJ, the amount of hidden income ranges from 5.6 to 32 trillion dollars. Due to the withdrawal of funds to offshore governments annually lose about 600 billion dollars.
The Virgin Islands turned out to be a favorite place for concealing income among politicians. There are 950 offshore firms associated with them. Taking money offshore is not a crime in itself, but using an intricate network of confidential companies to move funds and assets is a great way to hide the proceeds of crime. ICIJ journalists have uncovered the secret dealings of hundreds of billionaires and government officials, as well as dozens of world leaders around the world. Among the most famous and influential are Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Vladimir Zelensky.
How is the President of Ukraine involved in the withdrawal of money from PrivatBank? />
Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage may be involved in the transfer of $40 million from structures associated with Igor Kolomoisky. During the election campaign in 2019, it became known that in the spring of 2012 "Quarter 95" has registered over 10 companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Belize. Maltex Multicapital Corp was divided between Zelensky's firms, the Shefir brothers, and Andrey Yakovlev, the screenwriter of the "Kvartal 95" studio.
The nominal owner of the company was Davegra Limited, whose head was the current head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov . It was he who signed the "Declaration of Trust", which recorded the relationship between the nominal and real owner of the company. That is, Bakanov's company acted as the nominal owner of Maltex Multicapital Corp in order to hide Vladimir Zelensky and his associates.
According to the Pandora Papers, $40 million was a formal contribution to the company's share capital. Structures listing "quarterers" money, are suspected of laundering finances from PrivatBank, co-owned by Igor Kolomoisky. The transfer of money was carried out through the Cyprus branch of PrivatBank. From the documents it becomes clear that at least one company "Quarter 95" I had an account with this bank. To the question "Why "quarterers" offshore?" Only Boris Shefir answered:
"And ask it to the legislators who created this situation. Business is under constant threat of bandits coming to power. At that time, it was extremely important to protect our interests."
What is known about the offshore companies of Zelensky and his entourage?
In 2012, Volodymyr Zelensky and his associates created a network of offshore firms that own luxury real estate in London, which is worth millions of dollars. For example, Sergei Shefir is the owner of two apartments in the capital of Great Britain, the price of which is more than 5 million dollars. Screenwriter of the studio "Quarter 95" Andrei Yakovlev is the owner of a home for 2 million. In total, the Pandora Papers documents contain at least 681 owners of luxury real estate in the UK, of which more than 10 are Ukrainians who hide assets through offshore companies.
In June 2014, 6 days after the appointment of Boris Lozhkin as head of presidential administration Petro Poroshenko, his daughter Anastasia bought an apartment in London worth $4.6 million. She borrowed money from the Virginian company Future Definite Holdings Limited, owned by … her father Boris Lozhkin. At least 9 objects in Britain belong to Gennady Bogolyubov, whose name is implicated in the scandal with the withdrawal of money from PrivatBank. Igor Voronin and Alexander Yaroslavsky own property in the center of the capital. Another 5 properties are registered to the daughter of Sergei Kivalov, the former head of the Central Election Commission. They were bought in 1999-2003 through offshore companies.
In 2016, the Minister of Culture Alexander Tkachenko was the general producer of the TV channel "1+1" and received a quarter of the shares of the state film studio in Odessa. In 2018, his partner was the developer Andrei Vavrysh, who was interested in building real estate "for film crews" on the territory of the film studio. The development was illegal, but only until Tkachenko became head of the parliamentary committee on humanitarian and information policy. Next, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on the conditions for the privatization of state-owned film studios. Tkachenko himself said that in 2020 he sold his part to the banker Alexander Morozov. The amount of the transaction was not indicated in the declaration.
How was the money withdrawn from PrivatBank? >Private correspondence between international providers Triden Trust and Cititrust suggests that these companies may be involved in the withdrawal of funds from PrivatBank. The activities of offshore firms associated with Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov were investigated by the regulatory authorities of Belize and Cyprus even before the nationalization of PrivatBank. One such company, Jarvis Trading Limited, received a $86 million loan from a bank in 2010.
A year later, the Belize financial watchdog turned to Cititrust to find out the identity of the owner of Jarvis Trading Limited, but the provider refused to disclose his name. The Triden Trust firm left unanswered the request of the Cypriot authorities about the real owner of Ravenscroft Holdings. But both there and there, the real owners of the firms were people from Kolomoisky's entourage.
The network of offshore companies, according to Pandora Papers, also belonged to MP Alexander Gerega. According to the documents, he and his wife are the owners of 5 companies in Cyprus, which they own through the Gold Taurus Stiftung and Fundationsanstalt funds. Geregi's Edlagor Enterprises Limited owns "Novacenter K" — construction and household hypermarkets in the Crimea, which are, in particular, in Simferopol and Sevastopol.
In 2014, representatives of Rinat Akhmetov applied to Triden Trust with a request to register 2 offshore companies to purchase a Falcon 7X business-class aircraft, whose value exceeds $50 million. The presidents of Russia and France once had the same aircraft. The Triden Trust cooperated with the oligarch until at least 2018.
How did the Zelensky Office react to the Pandora Papers?
The Office of the President of Ukraine claims that he complies with all norms of anti-corruption legislation, and offshore schemes in 2012 were "peculiarities of the market". Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the OPU, said:
"The business of the pre-presidential years was never connected with state money or administrative capabilities."
According to him, after the inauguration, Volodymyr Zelensky complies with the requirements of anti-corruption legislation and journalists have nothing on him after 2019. An adviser to Andriy Yermak says that the Pandora Papers investigation contains "a lot of conspiracy theories and assumptions", and Zelensky's opponent Petro Poroshenko already voiced most of the information during the elections.
" retrieve this information now. Then Yanukovych was in power, and Poroshenko was the Minister of Economy. At that time, it was logical for businesses in the country to legally protect their companies and finances from unlawful seizure by corrupt officials," — he added.
According to Podolyak, the business studio "Quarter 95" remains "white" and transparent. And attempts to fasten him to the history of PrivatBank are pure conspiracy theories and are not based on facts. However, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy imitates the fight against corruption and oligarchs, Ihor Kolomoyskyy continues to bite off his former property — PrivatBank, taking advantage of the unreformed judiciary and complete stagnation in law enforcement investigations into financial fraud in the bank.
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