The biggest single host of Scotland's controversial limited partnerships has gone out of business.
Company creation specialists Cosun Formations Limited - based at an Edinburgh flat where some 2936 of the firms are currently registered - has been struck off.
READ MORE: Mystery as dissolved Scottish firm Childwall Systems provides armed guards in Ukrainian war zone
The address - 78 Montgomery Street, Leith - was previously the official home to as many as 3500 firms, including five allegedly implicated in the laundering of $1bn looted from Moldovan banks.
The firms Avenilla Commercial, Intratex Sales, Metalforum, Swedtron Alliance and Trademarket Networks hosted in Leith were all named by Kroll, investigators hired by the parliament of Moldova to discover how the country's financial institutions were robbed.
The same address was also used by a limited partnership, Brook Organisation, at the centre of a major suspected corruption scandal involving the jailed nephew of Uzbekistan's autocratic president Islam Karimov.
Earlier this year The Herald revealed the address was one of those raided by Police Scotland and HMRC as they crack down on SLPs associated with alleged criminality overseas.
Cosun Formations Ltd, was struck off in May, according to documents now filed at the UKs corporate register, Companies House.
That was days after The Herald challenged the occupants of the flat, and directors of Cosun Formations, John Hein, a former Liberal Democrat candidate, and his partner James Stuart McMeekin.
Asked to comment on alleged criminality conducted through companies registered at his home, he said: “Yes, it’s unfortunate but we no longer do that sort of business.”
He added: "We were acting as agent for other companies, for other company formations and their agents."
In its last published abbreviated accounts, Cosun Formations recorded total assets of around £16,000. Mr Hein and Mr McMeekin - although using the Gaelic version of his name - remain directors of another company, Cosun Services Limited, which is registered at the address.
READ MORE: Mystery as dissolved Scottish firm Childwall Systems provides armed guards in Ukrainian war zone
Of the five Scottish limited partners named by Kroll in connection with the Moldovan scandal and registered at 78 Montgomery Street, Metalforum, Intratex Sales, Swedtron Alliance and Trademark Networks have been dissolved. Avenilla Commercial remains theoretically active.
None of the 2936 limited partnerships that give the currently address of 78 Montgomery Street have filed accounts.
Critics refer to businesses creating hosting mass numbers of firms as "factories". However, such company creation agents would generally not know what the firms they set up or hosted actually did.
The closure of Cosun Formations comes amid growing concern that Scottish limited partnerships are being used for money-laundering.
As The Herald has revealed, such businesses are now routinely advertised, especially in eastern Europe as a vehicle for avoiding tax.
There are currently around 25,000 limited partnerships (SLPs) registered in Scotland, more than one in 10 of them at 78 Montgomery Street. Around a quarter of all live SLPs formed since they were first legislated for in 1907 were created between April 2015 and May 2016.
Oxfam has called for action to close a legal loophole that allows SLPs to be used as tax shelters. More than nine out of 10 newly created SLPs have two partners/owners registered in traditional fiscal paradises, such as Panama, Belize, or the British Virgin Islands.
The global charity warned that the country was becoming one of the world’s “secret tax havens where the privileged minority hide billions from authorities”.
READ MORE: Mystery as dissolved Scottish firm Childwall Systems provides armed guards in Ukrainian war zone
This week The Herald revealed that an SLP had been named in court documents alleging it had been used to skim $2m from a Ukrainian arms export deal with the Middle East. We also reported that a dissolved SLP was hiring soldiers experienced with firearms to guard a steel mill in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
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