Arakhamia: Google may move its headquarters from Europe to Kyiv

Ukraine has been actively negotiating with large foreign companies such as Apple, Google, PayPal, Rakuten, Binance, Amazon on possible entering the country.
"We have agreed with Rakuten [parent company of Viber]. We have been talking to Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange. We are now talking to Amazon about entering Ukraine. We are talking about a data center. We and Google discuss moving their headquarters from Europe here," David Arakhamia, the head of the Servant of the People party faction in the Verkhovna Rada, said in an interview with Liga.net.

Arakhamia doubts Facebook will enter Ukraine, stressing that this is linked, among other things, with the factor of Russia.

"Facebook won’t [enter Ukraine]. They have a position that they do not need R&D [department] as it is concentrated in the US. And they have a sales office in Russia," he said.

In addition, according to Arakhamia, the Russian factor influences negotiations with PayPal.

The head of the Servant of the People party faction also stressed that negotiations with all mentioned companies are in active stage but their internal bureaucracy somewhat slows down the specific result. He believes that faster results should be expected from talks with individual businessmen, not the companies.

"We have an active stage of negotiations everywhere. But they have a lot of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, such investors are geared to credit ratings and compliance. Much faster, agreements are made with rich people from countries with authoritarian regimes," Arakhamia said.