HE’s the funnyman tipped to walk the first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections. But as world headlines focus on comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy very few voters are laughing.

That is because Sunday’s vote comes after weeks of brutal and sometimes indiscriminate mudslinging about the nation’s tragically endemic corruption.

The claims and counter-claims are being made against against a backdrop of economic decline and an exhausting and seemingly endless war in the east against proxies for Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

And - inevitably, given the ubiquity of British shell firms in Ukraine - some of the allegations have Scottish links.

Background: David Pratt on how Ukraine's hellish war is hidden in plain sight

Mr Zelenskiy - who played a teacher who became president in a hit TV series before trying to get the job for real - has pitched himself as a clean pair of hands.

His main opponent, sitting president and chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko, counters that Zelenskiy is a stooge for an exiled billionaire.

The two men - polls suggest - are likely to meet again in a run-off election on April 21 after 37 other candidates, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, drop out.

The Herald: Yulia Tymoshenko complained about a lack of reforms

Yulia Tymoshenko

All three - and many more on the huge slate of candidates - have had their reputations and backgrounds challenged - perhaps trashed - in the campaign. Even Mr Zelenskiy - who is currently on around 20 per cent, surveys say, way short of the 50 per cent needed to win outright - is facing questions about his offshore finances, and property.

It appears that whoever wins - whoever inherits Ukraine’s conflict with Russia and its separatist allies in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk - will come to power hamstrung by scandal.

Background: How Britain enables routine, everyday corruption and fraud in the ex-USSR

“The closer we get to the elections, the more scandals there are around the main contenders for president,” declared Delovaya Stolitsa, a business weekly in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. “But the mines threatening the reputations of politicians were laid much earlier.”

The paper was referring to the baggage carried by so many of Ukraine’s leaders. Critics, including Mr Zelenskiy, argue the entire public sector, including the military, has been desperately hollowed out by dishonesty within.

But is not just Ukraine’s image which is being tarnished in the nation’s mudslinging about graft. So too is Scotland’s, and the UK’s.

That is because the corrupt need to launder their money. And because for years UK corporate entities, and especially controversial Scottish limited partnerships or SLPs have been the vehicle of choice for doing so.

SLPs featured on the last weekend of campaigning. An ally of Mr Poroshenko, whose popularity has waned to around 13 per cent, accused the husband of Ms Tymoshenko of owning one at the heart of a major arms export corruption case.

The Herald:

Ukrainian voter exits booth

Ivan Vynnyk, a senior lawmaker for Mr Poroshenko’s faction in Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, said Oleksandr Tymoshenko controlled a Scottish business called Fuerteventura Inter.

This firm, as reported by The Herald in 2016, was allegedly used to skim $2m off a controversial state export of ammunition to the Middle East.

Fuerteventura Inter has never filed any accounts or named any beneficiary. Mr Vynnyk said the SLP was “directly linked” to another which Mr Tymoshenko has admitted to owning. The two firms, he said, had the same ‘founders’. However, official filings at Companies House do not substantiate Mr Vynnyk’s claim.

The Herald:

Fuertenventura Inter and Mr Tymoshenko’s admitted SLP, which is called Toulouse Net, have different partners, all untraceable shell firms in tax havens. The two SLPs do share an address, along with thousands of other Scottish shell companies, at a former drapery store in Douglas, South Lanarkshire. And their paperwork was filed by the same agent. However, this in itself is not evidence of a link.

Mr Vynnyk’s assertions come two years after Mr Poroshenko faced similar claims that he was connected to an SLP involved in a scandal - sanctions-busting in the Russian-annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

BACKGROUND: The Herald reveals Ukrainian politicians behind Scots shell firms

The SLP concerned had formal partners - owners in name - from Panama which journalists said also cropped up in structures linked with his confectionary empire.

However, SLPs and other shell structures frequently have similar formal partners but these can be throwaway shell firms, operated under powers-of-attorney. They are not a useful indication of true ownership: their purpose is to conceal real beneficiaries.

Yet, as Delovaya Stolitsa detailed, candidates - all of whom deny any wrongdoing - have plenty of other alleged “skeletons in their cupboards”.

These include concerns about Mr Zelenskiy’s record in Russian film-making, with offshore links, and his failure, according to independent journalists, to declare his ownership of a 15-room villa in Italy.

The Herald: Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko lifts objection to referendum

Petro Poroshenko

Mr Poroshenko has been accused of turning a blind eye to graft, not least in the military. He has hit back, describing both Mr Zelenskiy and Ms Tymoshenko as puppets of self-exiled billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who lives in Israel. Mr Zelenskiy and Ms Tymoshenko have rejected those claims.

Mr Poroshenko and Mr Kolomoyskyi have relied on an arsenal of media outlets under their control. Just days before the vote, Mr Kolomoyskyi’s TV channel aired a new season of the Servant Of The People series featuring Mr Zelenskiy as Ukraine’s leader.

Its star did deliver one laugh on election day. He walked in to the wrong voting booth as onlookers cheered.