For Britain’s leaders they are a dirty little secret tarnishing the country’s image. For Ukraine’s, they are just part of business as usual.

Last month the UK Government announced the first reforms of Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) described by campaign group Transparency UK as “Britain’s secrecy vehicle of choice”.

Under new rules the real owners of such firms – marketed globally as “zero-tax Scottish offshore companies” – must make themselves known.

Some of them, The Herald can reveal, are going to be the counterparts of the British ministers introducing the measure.

Because over the last two years several senior politicians and officials in Ukraine – where SLPs appear particularly popular – have either been found to use the instruments or have admitted doing so.

These include the husband of Yulia Tymoshenko, two-time presidential candidate, twice prime minister of Ukraine and one of the leaders of the country’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

Oleksandr Tymoshenko last year said he earned nearly 700,000 hryvnia – or about £20,000 – from an SLP called Toulouse Net, based, like several thousand other shell firms, at the offices of a small accountancy firm in the former mining village of Douglas, South Lanarkshire.

There is nothing in official paperwork for Toulouse Net to link to Mr Tymoshenko.

The firm was founded in 2015 by two other anonymously owned SLPs, both set up by anonymous shell firms from traditional tax havens which have featured in numerous previous Herald stories.

There is no way to check the accuracy of Mr Tymoshenko’s reports of income from the Toulouse Net since, as an SLP, it is not obliged to file accounts.

There is no suggestion that simply owning or controlling an SLP is evidence of criminal wrongdoing or unethical behaviour.

Ms Tymoshenko’s opponents also have family members with SLPs. This includes the man who beat her to be president in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Vladimir Putin who fled to Russia after being ousted in 2014.

A few months later Mr Yanukovych’s son was linked with an SLP by independent news agency Unian. The wire service cited Oleksandr Yanukovych as the true owner of a hotel, called the Bratislava in the central Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk.

In December 2014 Unian revealed that formal ownership of the hotel had been transferred to four offshore companies, two English, one Cypriot and an SLP called Kellano Inter.

It did not suggest he had given up real control of the business, part of an empire valued at $500 million in early 2014. Yanukovych junior, a dentist, also fled to Russia and is now subject to EU travel bans.

Kellano Inter is registered at the same address as Mr Tymoshenko’s SLP, Toulouse Net. The same company agent, CIE Europe, created both entities. This does not suggest they are connected in any way. Nor does it suggest CIE Europe had any knowledge of the activities of any of the businesses it incorporated.

Several other politicians from President Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions have used SLPs. We have previously reported that these include Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a Ukrainian MP who now lives in London having fled Ukraine after being accused of corruption. The assets of his Scottish firm were seized last year.

Yet another SLP was last year named as part of a major corruption investigation in to a Party of the Regions local leader in Dnepropetrovsk.

The firm was the official owner of a 400,000-euro yacht registered in the British Virgin Islands but moored near the holiday home in Croatia of Viktor Naumenko, one-time deputy leader of the local regional council. Ownership of the SLP, called Streamford Systems, was eventually traced to Mr Naumenko’s common-law wife, according to local press reports citing court documents. Mr Naumenko last month went on trial accused of a violent crackdown on protesters demanding the fall of Mr Yanukovych’s government in 2014.

Streamford Systems was previously registered at a flat in Leith – 78 Montgomery Street – which was once home to one of the biggest hosts of SLPs in Scotland.

It is now officially based at the same property in Tait’s Lane, Dundee, as the SLP used by Mr Onyshchenko, Rexlord Systems.

It is common for SLPs to share addresses and registration agencies and this does not suggest any connection between them.

Former MP Roger Mullin said: “These revelations emphasise the need for continued action to sort the use of SLPs for criminal purposes.

“That this clearly involves senior political figures is particularly concerning, and emphasises the importance of ensuring there is robust and transparent registration of ‘people with significant control’.

“The more The Herald investigates, the more we find additional causes for concern. The UK Government must now move with haste to publish the results of their review of SLPs before parliament rises for the summer recess.”