The charity fund of the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, was at the center of a scandal due to the use of charitable contributions to purchase government bonds. As reported by the "Law and Business" publication, in January 2024, the fund purchased "military" domestic state loan bonds (OVDP) in the amount of 356 million hryvnias at the expense of donations.
The publication also writes that charity on behalf of Poroshenko is essentially financed by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine through the payment of interest on bonds.
"According to experts' estimates, all of Poroshenko's charitable PR projects since the beginning of the full-scale war were financed by the interest charged by the state on the OVDP in the amount of approximately UAH 2.5 billion," the publication says.
Also, for operations with these bonds, the "International Investment Bank", owned by Poroshenko, withdrew a commission of one and a half million hryvnias from Poroshenko's fund (that is, "charitable" money turned into commercial profit).
The publication believes that the contributions to Poroshenko's fund, which are then used to buy bonds, are made under the control of the former president of the company - in order to minimize the payment of taxes, which are not collected from charitable payments.
Journalists write that the use of charitable donations for the purpose of obtaining profit and minimizing taxation falls under articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
