2,367 companies are registered at an ordinary five-story apartment building in Kyiv

Since the start of the full-scale war, 9,318 companies have been registered at mass registration addresses. Of these, 2,775 were added last year — a drop of almost 25% compared to the year before. Currently, there are 1,654 such addresses used for mass business registration, and more than half of them are in Kyiv.

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A total of 180,000 companies are registered at these mass registration addresses, and 83% of them are currently active. The majority of these businesses are in Kyiv — 68% or about 101,000 companies. Another 6% are located in Kharkiv region — around 9,400 companies. Dnipropetrovsk region ranks third with 4.5%, which is about 6,600 businesses.

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The address with the most companies registered in Ukraine is 12 Melnykova Street in Kyiv, where 2,367 companies are listed. According to maps, this is just a regular five-story residential building. This address has held the top spot since 2018, when Opendatabot first began analyzing this issue.

If we assume that the average office size for one company is 100 square meters, then to physically fit all these businesses, you would need 237,300 square meters of office space. That’s about 1.5 times the size of Gulliver business center in Kyiv. For comparison, only 100 companies are officially registered at Gulliver Hall.

30.6% of all companies at mass registration addresses are engaged in wholesale trade (excluding vehicles and motorcycles). That’s about 45,700 businesses.

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«Registering a company at a mass registration address (except for business center addresses) is one of the signs of a shell company — this is clearly stated in financial monitoring regulations. A mass registration address is defined as one where more than 50 legal entities, trusts, or other legal formations are registered», 

— says lawyer Oleksii Koltok, partner at the law firm Sayenko Kharenko.

Such registration is not illegal, but it does carry certain risks. For example, banks, insurance companies, or other institutions must carry out enhanced checks and request documents to prove that the business is real. Otherwise, they may refuse to provide services. The Tax Service also inspects such companies more carefully, especially during on-site audits. If the business is not actually located at the registered address, its tax invoices can be blocked.

In addition, the Tax Service may question the company’s expenses for corporate income tax and the VAT credit claimed for goods or services received from a company registered at a mass address. These risks also apply to the company’s partners, which is why this kind of registration can harm the business’s reputation and relationships, the lawyer adds.