The tax haven, the Ukrainian ex-president and a mystery Australian banker

An Australian banker co-owns a company in Luxembourg with Petro Poroshenko, an ex-president of Ukraine and chocolate oligarch with a taste for offshore companies and secret bank accounts.   

The OpenLux database, which Le Monde created by scraping Luxembourg’s beneficial owners register in 2020, lists Richard John Martin, a 67 year old Australian-British banker, as a co-beneficial owner of chocolate company Roshen Group SARL with Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine president from 2014 to 2019.

A beneficial owner is a natural, breathing person who ultimately owns or controls more than 25% of a company’s shares or voting rights. They are not necessarily the legal owner of a company, which may be another entity or a nominee holding shares on behalf of a beneficial owner.   

Corporate records in Australia and the United Kingdom show Richard Martin was born in Strathalbyn, in rural South Australia, and was a director in the late 1990s and early 2000s of dozens of companies - some were owned by ANZ, ASX, ABN Amro, Investec, and Rothschild. During part of this period Martin resided in a five bedroom home in Balwyn, Melbourne. It sold for $5.8m in 2024.

It's not known if Martin still has a stake in the Luxembourg company, which was established in 2018 while Poroshenko was still president, because public access to the beneficial owners register was blocked following Le Monde’s investigations.

However corporate records show the holding company, renamed Central European Group SARL in 2021, remains registered. Its most recent annual report, for calendar year 2023, shows a profit of US$7.5 million, down from US$28.9 million in 2022.

Bond Corp fraudster

Oates does the perp walk in Poland, where he went on the lam.

Older readers would remember Tony Oates, the former Bond Corporation finance chief who was jailed in 2005 for taking $500 million from Bell Resources in the 1980s to prop up its failing parent Bond Corp. (He was only brought to justice after a 7 year extradition battle by the Australian government to bring him back from Poland.)

Oates is listed in OpenLux as the sole beneficial owner of IXA International Holding SA, which was registered in 2014, and Eliane-Properties SA, registered in 2008. IXA made a profit of over €308,000 in 2023 and Eliane-Properties reported a loss of €3.6m that year.

And these aren’t Oates’ only companies in tax havens, with a leak from the Bahamas Companies Register in 2018 showing he was a director of USM Global Limited.

Illegal drug maker

Another crook in OpenLux is 39 year old Sydneysider Ryan Gregory McTeigue, who last year received a suspended two year prison sentence in Australia for “his role [via his company Elite Labs] in the unlawful manufacture, supply, advertising and export of performance and image enhancing therapeutic goods.”  

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) found that among the goods McTeigue illegally supplied are what’s known as Schedule 10 poisons, which the TGA described as “substances that are of such danger to public health, they are prohibited from supply and use.”

McTeigue is listed in OpenLux as the sole owner of ‘health supplements’ business Elite Health Group SA, which was established in Luxembourg in 2016 and continues to operate (but hopefully not supplying poisons to customers). McTeigue resigned as a director of Elite Health in 2022.

Kremlin associate

Marc Christopher Ryan, a 47 year old Muscovite who hails from Brisbane, is listed as a beneficial owner of four Luxembourg holding companies developing offshore hydrocarbon projects in the Russian Federation. These include Magadanmorneftegaz SARL, Perseymorneftegaz SARL, Lisyanskmorneftegaz SARL, and Kashevarmorneftegaz SARL.

Corporate records show the companies are 100% owned by Rosneft JV Projects SA, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned Rosneft Oil Company which has been sanctioned by Australian, EU and US authorities. Ryan’s current involvement in the companies is not clear as he quit his directorships of the four companies between 2021 and 2022.

Why Luxembourg? It's a good place to shift profits.

Luxembourg is ranked the world’s tenth worst tax haven by the Tax Justice Network, which found the country enabled US$28 billion in tax avoidance and tax evasion by multinationals and wealthy individuals in 2024.

A big attraction for non-resident foreigners is that Luxembourg does not tax them on their world-wide income, which may explain why Le Monde's investigation found 55,000 foreign-owned companies in the beneficial owners register with total assets of at least €6 trillion. The media outlet describes these companies as “phantom companies without offices or employees.”

It’s not illegal for an Australian to own a company in Luxembourg, and Open Politics does not suggest anyone in OpenLux has engaged in wrongdoing. Indeed, there are legitimate reasons for non-resident foreigners to own companies and funds in Luxembourg: the country has investor-friendly financial and legal systems and is a convenient hub for companies to invest in Europe. 

However you have to wonder whether the Grand Duchy’s tax advantages were a drawcard too for Poroshenko and the four Australians to set up shop there.

We tried to put questions to Messrs Martin, Oates, McTeigue, and Ryan but, alas, we were unable to obtain their contact details. They truly are phantoms, just like their companies.   

In the case of Poroshenko's and Martin’s company, there are hints that it might have more to do with tax engineering than chocolate making as the Paradise Papers revealed that soon after Poroshenko was elected Ukrainian president in May 2014 his lawyers set about creating a Luxembourg holding company as part of a plan for a chain of Roshen companies in tax havens.

Then in August 2014 Mossack Fonseca, of Panama Papers infamy, was engaged to create an offshore tax plan, but without a Luxembourg entity due to concerns by Poroshenko’s lawyers that creating a company there would not be in the public interest because it would reduce Roshen’s Ukrainian tax liabilities.

Four years later Poroshenko seems to have dispensed with his lawyers’ advice and gone and established a Luxembourg company. Which raises an obvious question: has the entity allowed Poroshenko to (legally) reduce his chocolate empire's tax liabilities in Ukraine, contrary to the national interest?

And what role, if any, has the Australian co-owner Richard Martin played in all this?

If only we could contact him.

Our analysis of the OpenLux database identified 291 Australians or Australian-born individuals listed as beneficial owners of over 950 companies, investment funds, or foundations in Luxembourg as of 2020. Stay tuned for more articles.