More than 600 Ukrainian companies disguised Russian traces

Businessmen from Russia continue to make money in Ukraine by illegally re-registering companies that have removed Russian owners or beneficiaries.

This is stated in a study by analysts of the Opendatabot platform.

According to the study, 621 Ukrainian companies have removed their owners or ultimate beneficiaries from Russia over the past three years. After getting rid of the Russian trace, these businesses continued to operate in Ukraine. At the same time, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the law has prohibited the removal of Russian owners or beneficiaries from companies.

The analysts turned to the Ministry of Justice, which is supposed to control these processes, and checked 10 companies and found violations and facts of illegal registration actions in 8 cases.

These are the following businesses:

RAVETTI UKRAINE, a company with a mass registration address shared with 75 other businesses. Last year, the company's net profit reached UAH 4.7 million. Since the beginning of the year, this company has already won tenders for almost UAH 3 million from the regional gas companies of Kyiv, Rivne, and Sumy.

DOMOPHON. ENGINEERING. SECURITY. Last year, the company's net profit amounted to UAH 3.3 million.

GESTLIFE TRAVEL. Last year, the company's revenue amounted to UAH 1.4 million.

ES McKenzie-Ukraine: last year, the company made a net profit of UAH 515 thousand.

Investment and Business Development Center with a net profit of UAH 312 thousand last year.

EXMO EXCHANGE UKRAINE, now LALANA GROUP. The company suffered a loss of UAH 1.6 million last year. In addition, the business currently has unpaid debts to the budget under enforcement proceedings.

REOSVIT - the company owns the Nadi Renardi trademark. In addition, the business is registered at the address of mass registration, where 53 other companies have registered their legal addresses.

NOVACOM UKRAINE. Since 2020, the company has not submitted its financial statements.

"Some notaries or state registrars who certified the changes were responsible for illegal re-registrations. Mostly, the specialists were temporarily deprived of access to the registers," the analysts said.

Despite the fact that the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has confirmed violations even after several spot checks, no registration action has been canceled, and the companies continue to operate.

At the request of OpenDataBot, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine commented that registration changes can be canceled either on the basis of a court decision or if a complaint is filed by a person whose rights have been violated within two months from the date when the person learned or could have learned about the violation of their rights, but not later than one year from the date of the relevant decision, action or inaction.

However, in the vast majority of cases, more than a year has passed since the re-registration, meaning that the deadline has been missed. At the same time, there is no specific victim of the withdrawal of Russian capital and business whitewashing.

"Which Ukrainian authority will take control of the re-registration of Russian assets and cancel the statute of limitations on such transactions? Who, in the end, should initiate further consideration of cases where the state of Ukraine is actually the victim? While these questions remain open, Russians continue to withdraw their funds, and their businesses continue to make money on Ukrainians and public tenders," said Oleksiy Ivankin, founder of the OpenTable.

In May 2024, the Center for Public Investigations also analyzed how the mechanism of restrictions for the aggressor country's business works and how it is circumvented. And in September 2022, analysts of the R&D center YouControl studied data on public procurement since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine and found that more than 190 companies that won tenders totaling more than UAH 985 million had ties to the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.

Кирило Бойко