Editor’s Note: This is a text version of a story by journalist Dmytro Gnap that aired on Hromadske TV on 10 p.m. on April 3. The story is based on the documents that were originally obtained by Sueddeutsche Zeitung from their sources and shared with Organized Crimes and Corruption Reporting Project, a Kyiv Post partner, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The major findings of the Panama Papers project can be found here
Odesa mayor Hennady Trukhanov denies owning any businesses.
Ukrainian journalists have alleged that Trukhanov has links to the Odesa-based companies, but the mayor always denied it in interviews as well as tax declarations.
Trukhanov refused to be interviewed for the story by Hromadske TV.
But documents and emails from a Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. that were obtained by journalists of Hromadske TV suggest that Trukhanov and his associates own many businesses in Odesa through the offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Trukhanov was elected mayor of Odesa, a Black Sea port city of 1 million people on May 27, 2014.
Hromadske TV counted 20 companies linked to Trukhanov and his close associates through offshore firms. The companies develop residential and commercial properties in Odesa, own land and receive state orders for road repairs in Odesa and Kyiv.
One of them is Macon Assets Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Island. It has two co-founders – Odesa mayor Trukhanov and Andriy Ivancho.
Ivancho and Trukhanov go a long way back together. In the 1990s they co-founded a security firm Captain in Odesa. When Trukhanov got elected to Ukrainian parliament, Ivancho was employed as his assistant.
Today, Ivancho together with Trukhanov’s daughter Kateryna Trukhanova heads Skvo, a developing company that built Ark-Palace, Odesa’s highest building that has both residential and office spaces.
Another company from the British Virgin Islands owned by Trukhanov is Corderoy Trading Limited. It is co-owned by Trukhanov, Ivancho and a third partner Yuriy Schumacher.
Schumacher is a deputy of Odesa City Council, elected as a member of Trukhanov’s party Trust the Deeds.
Before running for city council in 2015, Schumacher was a CEO of ROST, a group of companies that Ukrainian journalists suggested were linked to Trukhanov. He denied the connection.
ROST has been getting state orders for repairing the roads in Odesa and Kyiv. According to Odesa-based anti-corruption activist Arkadiy Topov, interviewed by Hromadske TV, said that Odesa has increased its road repairing budget by five times since Trukhanov came to post: from Hr 66 million in 2013 to Hr 374 million in 2016.
In the registration documents obtained by the journalists Trukhanov is mentioned as a citizen of Russia, not Ukraine. His registration address is in Sergiyev Posad, a city near Moscow.
Back in 2014, member of parliament Volodymyr Ariev accused Trukhanov of holding a Russian passport, thus violating a Ukrainian law that bans dual citizenship. Trukhanov denied being a citizen of Russia. Hromadske TV also looked into Trukhanov’s career in 1990s and claim that he was a part of a criminal group that controlled arms trafficking.
