A Scottish shell firm used as a front for an online payment system in the ex-USSR has been dissolved days after it was due to reveal its true owners.
Edinburgh-registered Akkord Welt provided a corporate name and UK address for Payeer, a website offering peer-to-peer money transfers from a base in Georgia.
The Scottish limited partnership (SLP) formally filed for dissolution on August 11, according to documents filed at Companies House.
It was one of several SLPs - a kind of firm widely marketed in the former Soviet Union as off-the-peg “Scottish offshore zero-tax companies” - which have been linked with payment systems not regulated in the UK.
It had until earlier this month to make a declaration of “person of significant control” or PSC under new British regulations to clean up SLPs after after a two-year Herald investigation.
Payeer describes itself as an “electronic wallet” and enables its customers to transfer money in different currencies, including the digital proto-currency bitcoin.
Unusually for an SLP, Akkord Welt had a named individual as a partner, Yelena Kulbikova, rather than an untraceable corporation in a tax haven.
Last year Ms Kulbikova was named by Ukrainian investigative news site Crime.ua as the director of a construction group that works for the successor organisation of Russia’s KGB.
The Herald contacted Payeer to ask why Akkord Welt was being dissolved. In an unsigned response, the website’s support team denied this was the case, saying: “ Akkord Welt LP is an active company.”
It added: “We started procedure of one partner change (it has nothing to do with the new rules).”
“Akkord Welt does not provide any services for UK citizens.”
Last year, in another unsigned response, Payeer said that Akkord Welt was not active. It added: “We don’t have any connection with either criminality or the Russian security services.”
Until yesterday Payeer’s website continued to give an old Aberdeen mail drop address for Akkord Welt.
The SLP is now officially registered in Edinburgh, at the same mail drop as front firms for two other payment systems not subject to UK regulation, epay and wpay.
Payeer was subject to a now withdrawn warning from the UK Financial Conduct Authority.
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