Arakhamia Admits That He Owned Offshore Companies And Does Not See Anything Wrong With This

Chairperson of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada David Arakhamia admitted that he owned offshore companies, and his wife still owns one offshore company, while he does not see anything wrong with this.

He announced this to journalists, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"I have not yet looked (the Pandora Papers investigation of the offshore Ukrainian officials), to be honest. Well, there is also a story from 9 years ago, when it was in business. Offshores are two things. By the way, I had a lot of offshore companies. I even showed it openly in my declaration. Now my wife has one offshore company from Seychelles. This is a normal process," he said.

In his opinion, there are negative and positive sides in offshore.

The positive side of offshore companies, he called their international jurisdiction.

Arakhamia noted that almost all of the "top 100 billionaires in the world" have offshore firms that hold some kind of property that can be protected "thanks to British law, for example."

The negative side of offshore companies, he called the fact that this is "potentially some kind of manipulation with taxes, which must be combated."

Arakhamia stressed that Servant of the People adopted "anti-offshore" bill No. 1210, which will work from January 1, the essence of which is that people will not have to get rid of or hide offshore companies, but it will be possible to officially show these companies and pay taxes in Ukraine.

Thus, according to the chairperson of the Servant of the People faction, the negative side of offshore companies will disappear, only the positive will remain.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova does not consider the investigation of Slidstvo.info about the analysis of Pandora Papers documents on PrivatBank a surprise for the law enforcement system and refused to comment on the information about multimillion-dollar remittances to the firms of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his entourage from the structures of businessman Ihor Kolomoiskyi.

Part of the information from the Slidstvo.info investigation about the analysis of Pandora Papers documents is contained in materials within the framework of criminal proceedings on PrivatBank.