The leaked documents known as the Panama Papers are bringing more discoveries, including revelations that more Ukrainians close to President Petro Poroshenko have set up offshore firms in tax havens.
The names of several close associates of Poroshenko can be found in a searchable database of information on the leaked documents put online by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on May 9.
The database includes extracts from the 11.5 million documents from the email servers of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that were leaked to selected journalists in 2015.
Altogether, the documents uncover nearly 214,000 offshore entities in 21 jurisdictions, and feature 360,000 names of people.
They include names of three people from Poroshenko’s circle: managers of Roshen confectionary corporation Serhiy Zaitsev and Viacheslav Moskalevskyi as well as a former business partner and current top official Oleh Gladkovsky (Svynarchuk).
All three of them have known Poroshenko for 20 years. And like their presidential patron, all three turned out to own offshore firms.
Poroshenko circle
There are 469 entities with Ukrainian beneficiaries in the released database, and several of them are owned by people close to Poroshenko. These findings come on the heels of the discovery that Poroshenko set up an offshore firm in 2014 called Prime Asset Partners Ltd.
Poroshenko’s lawyers have justified the move as a required step to sell his Roshen confectionary business, and denied allegations of attempted tax evasion.
One of the new findings concerns a company called Intraco Management Ltd., which is owned by an associate and reportedly long-time friend of the president, deputy head of Roshen Zaitsev (misspelled on the ICIJ website as Sergev Zuitstv).
Earlier in 2016, Ukrainian and British media reported that Intraco Management Ltd. paid transportation bills for Poroshenko and transferred money to Daria Kononenko, a daughter of Ihor Kononenko, Poroshenko’s business partner and deputy head of his party in parliament.
Back in April, Kononenko said he didn’t know of any such a company, or its activities.
The company proved to be owned by Zaitsev, another associate of Poroshenko. He confirmed his ownership to Interfax-Ukraine news agency on May 10.
Zaitsev said that the company organizes private jet trips. He denied media reports that Intraco bought aviation fuel from a subsidiary of Russian state oil and gas company Gazprom in 2014.
Intraco Management Ltd. is registered in Kyiv at 29A Elektrykiv St. It is the address of Fifth Element, a sports club owned by Poroshenko. The head office of Poroshenko’s company Roshen is a block away, at 26/9 Elektrykiv St.
The CEO of Roshen, Moskalevskyi, is in the leaked offshore data as well. He is a shareholder in a company called Leggett Assets Enterprises Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Natalia Panova, a Roshen spokesperson, told the Kyiv Post that Moskalevskyi was indeed a shareholder in the offshore company, and used it to make foreign investments before stopping its activity in 2013. According to Panova, Moskalevskyi got a license from National Bank of Ukraine to open the offshore company.
Another associate of Poroshenko in the leak is Gladkovsky (Svynarchuk), the deputy secretary of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Gladkovsky, who was known under the last name Svynarchuk until he changed it in 2014, is a shareholder of Teckford Investments Financial Corporation, registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Gladkovsky told Ukrainian online media Liga.net that he had a license for the offshore company and that he saw no conflict of interests in being an official, a businessman, and a shareholder of an offshore firm.
Like Kononenko, Zaitsev, and Moskalevskyi, Gladkovsky has been Poroshenko’s business partner since his business empire began to grow in the 1990s.
“Teckford Investments was created to get investments to save Bogdan Corporation from raider attacks in summer 2015,” Gladkovsky told Liga.net.
Bogdan Corporation is a Ukrainian automobile manufacturer owned by Svynarchuk. Poroshenko was a shareholder of the company until 2009.
But according to the Panama Papers database, Teckford Investments was created in 2007 and is still active today.
Business, ex-lawmakers
Viacheslav Moskalevskyi
Names that match former lawmakers and Ukraine’s richest people can also be found in the database.
Ukrainian citizen Arsen Ivanyushchenko (misspelled as Ivanyushenchenko) is a shareholder of Skyrose Ltd., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, while Iryna Ivanyushchenko is listed as a shareholder of Ireton Commercial Ltd., also registered in the BVI.
These names are similar to those of the son and wife of fugitive Ukrainian businessman and former lawmaker Yuri Ivanyushchenko, often dubbed “Yura Yenakiyevskiy” for his hometown Yenakiyeve in Donetsk Oblast. He was close to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, also from Yenakiyeve. The documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca list a Yenakieve address for the company owned by Arsen Ivanyushchenko.
Since January 2015, Yuri Ivanyushchenko has been wanted in Ukraine for embezzlement and illicit enrichment.
Ivanyushchenko owns the heavy engineering company Azovmash. Ukrainian magazine Focus evaluated his net worth as $399 million in 2013.
Ivanyushchenko and his family members couldn’t be reached for comment.
Another Ukrainian listed in the leaked documents is Vakhtang Vasadze, son of Tariel Vasadze, owner of the UkrAvto car manufacturer and a former lawmaker with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions with an estimated net worth of $37 million. His son is a top manager of UkrAvto.
Vakhtang Vasadze, 37, holds shares in the Mira Petroleum International Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Vasadze couldn’t be reached, but UkrAvto Corporation spokesperson Dmytro Sklyarenko told the Kyiv Post that the offshore firm Mira Petroleum International Ltd. was created more than 10 years ago by Vasadze’s business partners.
“Vasadze was invited to participate in a business project that never started operating,” said Sklyarenko, revealing no more details.
Another Ukrainian name in the leak is Vadym Gryb. Gryb is an owner of TEKT investment company. He was a member of Crimea’s parliament before Russia’s 2014 annexation. He ran for the Verkhovna Rada in the 2014 election with Serhiy Tigipko’s party Strong Ukraine, but failed to win the election.
Gryb and his son Roman are listed in the Mossack Fonseca documents as a beneficiary and a shareholder in the Tokai Holdings Corporation, an energy and communication firm registered in the Bahamas.
The offshore data obtained in the Panama Papers is available at offshoreleaks.icij.org. The data can be filtered by country and is searchable by names, companies and offshore jurisdictions.
