Why Ukrainian leaders justify the use of offshore companies

Offshores or special zones with special tax conditions date back to ancient times. Even at a time when Greek Athens was the center of cultural and economic life, where a high tax was introduced on the import and export of products, ancient entrepreneurs, who were then called merchants, began to try to bypass the city’s territory in order to avoid paying the duty. The first offshores or tax havens for them were the nearby small islands, where goods were smuggled. Later, already in the 15th century, such an offshore zone was Flanders, on the territory of which British businessmen conducted vigorous activity, escaping high taxes in England.

In the modern sense, the term “offshore” appeared in the United States in the late 1950s, when one of the organizations operating de facto in the States was registered in another territory with lower taxation.

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And the first offshore zone in modern times was Switzerland, which, in order to attract foreign investment into its economy, created a special system of financial secrecy and became a kind of refuge for capital. Today, many, mostly small states, have followed a similar pattern, creating a favorable climate on their territory for the consolidation of foreign finance here.

_{Interestingly, the very placement of funds offshore is often not punished by law, but at the same time causes public condemnation. For example, in Ukraine, not only large businessmen, but even the country’s presidents became involved in offshore scandals. For example, the fifth head of state Petro Poroshenko, whose journalists found several offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. And current President Vladimir Zelensky was found to have offshore companies in Belize and Cyprus.}

However, those around the guarantor of the Ukrainian Constitution did not see anything wrong with this. Thus, the head of the pro-presidential “Servant of the People” faction, David Arakhamia, did not hesitate to say that he himself uses similar services.

“By the way, I had a lot of offshore companies. I even showed this openly in the declaration. Now my wife has one offshore company in Seychelles. This is a normal process,” Arakhamia said and added that all large businessmen use this practice.

A similar point of view is shared by the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, his friend and political ally Yuriy Lutsenko.

“From a legal point of view, any citizen of Ukraine can use offshore companies. Some even say that the entire business is using it. No, I don’t agree, that’s all. Both my family and I know a lot of people who never in their lives know what offshore companies are. But President Zelensky decided to concentrate the income from his pop, let’s say, activities there. This does not have legal consequences, but it does have political consequences,” Lutsenko said.

Today open an offshore company does not involve any difficulty. There are a lot of proven and reliable companies on the Internet that provide their services all over the world - from Western Europe to the Middle East, Asia, the USA and Latin America. Offshore zones can be compared with each other in terms of business conditions, organizational and legal standards, and so on. To do this, you just need to seek help from specialists who are in touch with their clients around the clock.