A Scottish firm officially wound up more than a year ago is to provide armed guards for a huge steel mill in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Childwall Systems - one of thousands of nominally Scottish business mushrooming in Ukraine - has won a contract to provide former soldiers and volunteer militiamen in the conflict zone provided they have "excellent skills with firearms".
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The firm is a controversial Scottish limited partnership of the kind now routinely marketed as a "Scottish offshore company" across much of the former Soviet Union. However, Companies House documents show that the business was formally dissolved in 2014.
Fighting in Donetsk in 2014
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Childwall Systems is to provide "defence services", according to Ukrainian newspaper Nashi Hroshi or Our Money, for the historic Makiivka iron and steel works in the unrecognised republic of Donetsk, a defacto independent statelet under the control of pro-Russian separatists.
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This Stalin-era plant - one of the most important in Europe - is currently effectively in the hands of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk football club and a £136.4m London penthouse, once the most expensive property ever bought in Britain.
Pro-Russian demonstrations in Donetsk
The contract is for just £70,000 and runs until the end of the year, according to Nashi Hroshi. Childwall Systems was registered at a virtual office in Edinburgh and, according to Nashi Hroshi, declared a UK phone number which, when checked by The Herald, proved to be a line for Network Rail.
Rinat Akhmetov, billionaire Ukrainian oligarch
The Herald on Tuesday revealed that a Scottish company called Fuerteventura Inter had been named in an unrelated arms export corruption prosecution.
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