The Economic Court of Kyiv has ruled that the general agreement on banking guarantees between the Slovyansky Bank (Zaporizhzhia) and the First Trading Bank Corporation (Nauru) is invalid as “contradicting the interests of the state and society” and ordered the state to seize the UAH 8.85 million in revenue earned by this offshore entity. The court found out that the corporation “was in fact used as the Slovyansky bank’s structural unit to pretend that international payments were being made.” “Using a non-resident company in the payments scheme, the bank would evade paying VAT, conceal its hard-currency earnings, and underrate its taxable profits,” the State Tax Administration of Ukraine (STA) says. The STA has instituted criminal proceedings against and announced the international search for Russian citizen M. R. Boldyrev, chairman of this corporation’s board of directors, on suspicion of financial machinations.
