President Petro Poroshenko believes that the offshore scandal that sparked around the Roshen confectionary company after the publication of "Panama archive was unfounded.
"There was no offshore scandal," the president stated at a press conference on 3 June. "It was a journalistic investigation, which unearthed a few things. First, a company was registered, which is engaged in syphoning of money out of Ukraine. The answer is that the company had no bank account, hence there was no and could not be any syphoning, the company was not used for [tax] minimization and has been created for the sole purpose of transferring the assets of President Poroshenko to a "blind trust" management," Poroshenko said.
"The second position was that this operation was carried out without a license. [We have] provided evidence that prior to the registration and the transfer of assets due answers had been received from the National Bank and the Ministry of Economy, that such licensing operation is not required," he added.
Poroshenko stressed that reputable companies like Rotschild, Baker & McKenzie and BakerTilly confirmed his case.
Petro Poroshenko found himself in the whirlpool of a scandal after the publication of a journalist investigation on the basis of a Panamanian offshore data logger. It turned out that in the summer of 2014, he has registered a company titled Prime Asset Partners to translate his confectionery business into the jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands.
The main complaint of journalists to Poroshenko was the fact that he failed to mention in his income statement the possession of 1,000-dollar worth of shares in the company, that he has not completed the transfer of Roshen into a "blind trust", and that he had allegedly intended to evade the payment of taxes in Ukraine during the sale of the corporation.