Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko Secretly Controlled Offshore Firms that Banked at Austria’s Raiffeisen
Costly works of art, including a painting by Ilya Repin and a sculpture by Salvador Dali, were among the assets acquired by offshore firms controlled by Petro Poroshenko. Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank enabled his deception, listing one of Poroshenko’s associates as the companies’ owner.
Poroshenko controlled at least six offshore shell companies handling tens of millions of dollars in transactions, including luxury furniture for his home and expensive art.
The companies banked at Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, which listed Poroshenko’s longtime employee as their owner.
Another 11 offshore companies banking at Raiffeisen also had ties to Poroshenko’s business empire.
In the early 2010s, Petro Poroshenko — a billionaire who had just served a stint as Ukraine’s foreign minister, and would later be elected president — built a palatial estate for himself outside Kyiv. He just needed furnishings to match his new home’s grandeur.
Using an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands called Vernon Holdings, Poroshenko and his wife, Maryna, proceeded to purchase over $100,000 worth of plush fittings from luxury Italian furniture-makers between 2009 and 2012, according to invoices and other documents viewed by OCCRP.
According to documents leaked in 2019 by anti-corruption “hacktivists,” Poroshenko’s family controlled the company. He was also the beneficiary of an insurance policy issued to Vernon. But you would never know it to look at the records of Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, where the offshore kept its accounts. Instead of Poroshenko, the bank listed his employee and longtime business associate, Sergiy Zaitsev, as the beneficiary.
That was just the beginning. Drawing on banking records, correspondence, invoices, and other documents, an OCCRP investigation has found that Raiffeisen — Austria’s second largest bank by assets — allowed Poroshenko to use Zaitsev to mask his control of at least six offshore companies used to fund business activities and personal dealings, including multimillion-dollar art purchases.
Raiffeisen identified Zaitsev as the beneficial owner of most of these companies, and he signed company documents for others — even as they handled tens of millions of dollars for Poroshenko before and during his presidency, according to emails and documents obtained by OCCRP.
In 2018, Austria’s Financial Market Authority (FMA) fined Raiffeisen 2.75 million euros for “inadequate checking of the identity of the beneficial owner and failure to regularly update the necessary documents, data and information required to be able to understand ownership and control structures with regard to high-risk customers in specific individual cases.” But the FMA did not specify which of Raiffeisen’s high-risk customers had been wrongly identified. In December 2019, Austria’s Supreme Administrative Court overturned the fine.
Poroshenko has held a variety of political positions since 1998 — including member of parliament, chairman of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine, and foreign minister — all while building a business empire and fortune estimated to be worth over $1 billion.
After becoming president following the Euromaidan revolution in late 2013 and early 2014, Poroshenko sought to portray himself as a reformer transforming one of Europe’s most corrupt countries. But he has been criticized for failing to tackle Ukraine’s entrenched oligarchy and — even prior to these revelations — for personal corruption as well.
In response to an emailed request for comment from OCCRP, legal advisers to Poroshenko said he had nothing to do with any of the companies.
“Petro Poroshenko is not and was not a shareholder, UBO or officer of any of the companies,” they said in a response signed, “Group of legal advisers of Petro Poroshenko for the protection of reputation from spreading fake news and biased investigations.”
Zaitsev did not respond to requests for comment, but in a 2016 interview with Interfax Ukraine, he denied owning Intraco Ltd on behalf of Poroshenko. “Put simply, I had, have, and God willing, will have my own business interests and projects, for which I created a number of companies,” he said.
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/former-ukrainian-president-poroshenko-secretly-controlled-offshore-firms-that-banked-at-austrias-raiffeisen