A company was registered in the United Kingdom to the name of Vladimir Saldo (Ukrainian spelling: Volodymyr), the Russia-installed “governor” of Ukraine’s Kherson region, in November 2022 despite the sanctions, The Guardian says.
Grainholding Ltd. is a company with a registered capital of £1 million and an office in central London. Saldo owns half the shares and another Ukrainian, Grigory Smytyuk, has the rest. Grainholding’s line of work is growing and trading grain.
Companies House, the UK corporate registry, does not require proof of identity when people form companies. However, Saldo’s entry on the sanctions list has been updated since Grainholding was registered, to draw in details from the company’s incorporation documents, suggesting that the UK authorities were aware of its existence and regarded the paperwork as genuine.
A government spokesperson declined to say whether any action had been taken against Grainholding.
Vladimir Saldo is a native of the Mykolaiv region. He received a degree in construction at the Kryvyi Rih Mining Institute. From 2002 to 2012, he was the mayor of Kherson, after which he had been an MP from the Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions for two years. In 2015, he became a local MP of the Kherson city council.
In April 2022, the Russian authorities appointed him the head of the military-civilian administration of the Kherson region, and in October of the same year, the interim governor of the occupied part of the region.
In July 2022, the UK sanctions were imposed against Saldo in connection with his actions that “undermined the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”
