IN UKRAINE they found a Scottish word for their former first family and its business: the “clan”.

Friends and relatives of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych did very well during his years in power.

His son Oleksandr , 44, was valued at a cool half a billion dollars before the so-called Maidan revolution swept his “papa” from power in 2014. His dad, whose opulent country home outside Kiev shocked the nation after his overthrow, was estimated to be worth 20 times more.

Both men are now in hiding in Russia as corruption cases proceed. The Yanukovych years ended in a separatist revolt, backed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, that still simmers in his old homeland of eastern Ukraine.

It was on Mr Yanukovych’s watch that Ukraine suffered a boom in the marketing of off-the-peg “offshore firms”, including tax-free Scottish ones called limited partnerships or SLPs. Oleksandr is said to have had one. But so too did thousands of Ukrainians, for a whole variety of reasons, including fear of “asset grab” that corrupt authorities or business rivals.

This newspaper has documented scores of examples of the abuse of such Scottish entities by unethical businesses or criminal groups in Ukraine, including corrupt arms dealers.

And SLPs are still being sold online in Ukraine - and other parts of the former Soviet Union, despite new transparency rules in both the UK and Ukraine.

SLPs, of course, as we have reported, have also been used for mass money-laundering out of Moldova, Russia and Azerbaijan and as fronts for Israel’s binary options industry, essentially fraudulent online gambling.

But it is not just the Yanukovych clan in Ukraine which has been linked to SLPs. The husband of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who stood against Mr Yanukovych in 2010 elections, previously declared an interest in an SLP.

That firm was called Toulouse Net. It has failed to name its “person of significant control” under new UK rules. It is not alone in doing so. SLP owners may just be one of the biggest “clans” of Ukraine.