Zelensky Used Offshore Schemes Benefiting Family, Friends, OCCRP Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has allegedly used offshore schemes so that his family could receive profits from their undeclared businesses overseas, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said on 3 October, citing the Pandora Papers.

"The files also show how another European leader elected on an anti-graft platform, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to have used complex offshore arrangements to allow his family to continue benefiting from overseas business without declaring it", the OCCRP said in a statement.

The Guardian reported, citing the Pandora Papers on 3 October, that Zelensky participated in a wide network of offshore companies, co-owned with his longtime friends and TV business partners, including Serhiy Shefir, who produced Zelensky's hit shows, and Shefir's older brother, Borys, who wrote the scripts.

Zelensky allegedly gave his 25 percent stake in the Maltex Multicapital Corp, a previously unknown entity registered in the British Virgin Islands, to Shefir two weeks before the first round of voting in the Ukrainian presidential election. After winning the vote, Zelensky made Shefir his first assistant, according to The Guardian.

On 3 October, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a new leak on the alleged financial secrets of over 35 current and former world leaders, as well as more than 330 politicians and officials from across the globe. ICIJ said the publication, called Pandora Papers in reference to the 2016 Panama Papers scandal, was based on a leak of 11.9 million files.