Poroshenko’s representatives: president’s income exaggerated by media
Vadim Medvedev, adviser at the Avellum legal firm, which represents the interests of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, claims that the media overstated the amount of profit shown in the president’s change of property status in 2018.
According to him, the reports on significant changes in Poroshenko’s property status actually reflect the return of funds he had previously invested.
In this way, Poroshenko received funds from internal government loan bonds (OVGZ), but the real profit is the difference between the principal investment amount and the returned amount.
“This means that the declared income is primarily the return of invested funds, and is not an increase in the physical entity’s wealth. The actual yield of operations with currency OVGZs is equal to the market rate of 3.35% per annum,” he said.
According to Medvedev, 28 million out of the 124 million hryvnia of revenue which Eurointegration previously reported for Poroshenko was actually capital being returned, and not profit.
“Presumably there could be thousands of hryvnia of profit, but not millions,” the adviser added.
He noted that Poroshenko had lent the government 100 million hryvnia through OVGZs.
It was reported previously that the Ukrainian President declared nearly 124 million hryvnia for the incomplete 2018 year. He received more than 9.3 million hryvnia in interest from deposits in the International Investment Bank. The remaining funds came from dividends, as well as 777,000 hryvnia from disposal of property, and at the end of October he declared 28.8 million hryvnia in income from the Ministry of Finance for the disposal of securities and corporate rights.
In the declaration for last year, Poroshenko put down 16,303,874 hryvnia in income.
The president will declare his income for the entirety of 2018 in 2019.
Earlier it was reported that Poroshenko had not declared his expenditure on the video advertisements in support of the autocephaly (independence) of the Ukrainian Church, which he supposedly paid for out of his own pocket.