President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that information about his offshore companies was published by the media controlled by his rival in the election race, Petro Poroshenko. He admitted that he really had such companies until 2019.
“Everything that I did before 2019, people know. This is television and cinema. In the days of Yanukovych, everyone structured their business. Especially the business related to television and media. All channels had companies abroad. Because it was an opportunity for politics not to influence you, ”Zelensky said in interview ICTV.
According to the Ukrainian president, the team of his project “Quarter 95” made many satirical performances that ridiculed the Ukrainian government. Therefore, it was necessary to have funds beyond the control of the Ukrainian leadership. “The tax service came to us, if not daily, then weekly, and for such things it was… it was called“ structuring the business ”of the Kvartal 95 studio,” Zelensky said.
The so-called Pandora Papers was published October 3 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). These are 12 million documents with data on the owners of offshore companies from around the world. The archive with this information ICIJ received from a source whose name was not disclosed. This is the result of the work of more than 600 journalists from more than 150 media outlets from 117 countries of the world, who have at their disposal the internal archive of 14 offshore registrars. On behalf of Russia, journalists from Important Stories took part in the investigation.