It’s easy to find the HQ of one the biggest importers of diesel in to Ukraine. Wexler Global LP is based behind a navy blue door and up a pine-lined green staircase. Its office is bright and airy, a chalkboard reminding visitors that the cleaners come on Wednesday evenings.
All normal enough. Except this is not Kiev or Odessa. This is Newry: the base for a firm which ships 70,000 tonnes of fuel in to Ukraine every month is a mail-drop in Northern Ireland.
This little fact is worth noting. Let me explain why. The UK Government last month once again signalled that it is going to take action against Scottish limited partnerships, or SLPs. the once rare corporate entities dubbed “Britain’s home-grown secrecy vehicles” by anti-corruption campaigners Transparency International.
READ MORE: NI peace deal has lasting impact on agreements worldwide, study finds
It has reason. SLPs are notoriously easy to abuse and have boomed thanks to their popularity as a means of veiling ownership for everyone from Russian VAT fraudsters - as we report today - to corrupt Latin American presidents.
However, SLPs are not the only British corporate structure that can be turned in to a getaway car for criminals or simply an identity shield for the rich and powerful.
Northern Irish LPs can be just as handy, even if they lack the legal personality, the power to own assets, that SLPs enjoy.
International Overseas Services, a company formation agency, is currently selling them off-the-shelf for 1450 euros. In Russian it calls them “tax-free companies” and says that ownership details are “confidential”.
READ MORE: NI peace deal has lasting impact on agreements worldwide, study finds
For example, the former prime minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, was last year revealed by US official documents to have used a Belfast partnership called Aveiro to pay for lobbying in America.
So as Theresa May sets her sights on SLPs she might want to look across the North Channel too.
But what of Wexler Global? Well, Ukrainian journalists have speculated it belongs to a chum of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This has been denied. But there is no way to be sure: the LP is under no obligation to even go through the motions of naming a beneficial owner. This is a big deal: Ukraine’s energy market is one of the great geopolitical and commercial battle grounds of the planet.
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