Ordinary flat in ordinary street has £18bn turnover
No one passing the sandstone tenement in a nondescript Edinburgh street would imagine it is home to multibillion dollar firms.
But companies registered in the city’s Brunswick Street have been linked by investigators from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to international money laundering.
Westburn Enterprises Ltd was dissolved last year but the OCCRP’s data shows £18 billion worth of transactions at the firm linked to Russian and Azerbaijan money laundering scandals.
Meanwhile a firm linked to the Panama Papers revelations about offshore tax avoidance is also based there.
Accounts for Russian IT company AOP Limited show the flat as its registered UK office. The company has seen sales of over £2 billion since it was incorporated in 2002.
Accounts show the firm turned over £700m in sales in just 2013 and 2014 – roughly equivalent to half of Scotland’s annual single malt whisky exports.
Almost all of AOP’s income was swallowed up by the cost of sales, leaving profits of just £108,000 over two years with the company paying just £34,000 in UK tax.
More than £23 million went to its parent company, Belize-based Constanta Limited.
The company’s initial paperwork was signed off in 2002 by a Scottish lawyer who has since been struck off.
Companies House records show the real owner of AOP is Vladimir Proskhin a Russian based in Monaco.
The 58-year-old was named in last year’s Panama Papers as having interests in a company set up by offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca.
We tried to contact AOP but they did not respond. Its website has also vanished.
Westburn and AOP were set up by Marios Papantoniou, a former Cypriot tax inspector who ran accountancy firm Axiano Ltd until this year.
He now lives in Cyprus due to ill-health but comes back to Scotland where his family still live.
He denied any wrongdoing, saying: “Apart from setting up these firms I have no involvement. I do due diligence but there is only so much you can do. Who knows what happens to the firms? They get sold on.
“I have never knowingly dealt with criminals or the mafia in setting up these firms but you never know.”
“People have their reasons for wanting to use companies that hide who really owns them.
“I’ve been investigated by the police before in relation to allegations a company I acted for was involved in the international drugs trade.
“But nothing came from that. It was in 2001 or 2002.
“AOP is a legitimate company based in St Petersburg who needed a UK address to appeal to western clients.
“There was nothing sinister. If the money goes to Belize it is nothing to do with me.”