Where Precision Meets Global Vision
In a world of shifting regulations and digital transformation, certainty is the ultimate advantage.
Led by Sergiy Kalinovskiy, with nearly two decades of senior and C-level experience across legal, finance, and asset management, SK Consult delivers discreet, high-impact advisory and designs structures that are strategic, compliant, and resilient.
Whether you are launching a FinTech platform, pursuing an iGaming license, or implementing a cross-border tax strategy, SK Consult applies a targeted and uncompromising approach—ensuring your corporate architecture fully matches the ambition of your vision.
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Book a confidential strategy call today and discover how SK Consult can structure, position, and scale your business globally.
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If you need practical legal and compliance support for cross-border operations, please get in touch with a brief overview of your business model, the jurisdictions involved, and your key counterparties—such as banks, EMIs, PSPs, or other partners. Based on that information, a proposed scope of work and recommended next steps can be provided.
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Who you are actually dealing with
SK Consult is a cross-border structuring practice based in Nicosia, Cyprus. It was founded by Sergii Kalinovskiy, a lawyer with roughly twenty years at senior and C-level in law, finance and asset management, who also serves as Group Head of Legal at Qore Advisory and Head of Legal at Cosmos Finance. Those two roles are not decoration on a CV. They mean the person advising you on a structure spends the rest of his week inside operating financial businesses, seeing which structures survive contact with a bank, a regulator and an auditor, and which ones quietly fall apart.
The practice is deliberately small and deliberately senior. There is no pyramid of junior staff learning on your file. The work that matters — jurisdiction choice, ownership architecture, the licensing narrative, the substance position, the file a compliance officer will actually read — is done by people who have defended those positions in front of the other side.
The organising principle across everything we build is simple: a structure has to be due-diligence ready. Not merely legal. Not merely tax-efficient on paper. Explainable, on demand, from a single file, to a bank MLRO, a regulator, a statutory auditor and a tax inspector — each of whom will ask different questions about the same set of facts.
The practice in numbers
How we work
These are not values on a wall. Each one changes something concrete about how a file is built and what you receive.
One point of accountability
You deal with one senior person who holds the whole picture. Registrars, banks, auditors, licensed fiduciaries and local counsel are coordinated behind that point, not handed to you as a list of contacts to chase.
Written scope before work starts
Before a mandate begins you receive what is in scope, what is out of scope, what depends on a third party we do not control, and what it costs. Surprises in an engagement letter are a failure of drafting, not a fact of life.
Compliance-first, not compliance-later
The AML, KYC and source-of-funds position is designed at the same time as the structure, not retrofitted when an EMI asks a question. Retrofitting is where most structures fail, because by then the paperwork already says something else.
Decisions on the record
Why this jurisdiction, why this ownership split, why this director, why this bank — each answer is documented at the moment it is made. Two years later, when someone asks, the reasoning exists in writing rather than in somebody's memory.
Honest about what will not work
If a plan will not survive an EMI onboarding, a tax-residency challenge or a licensing fit-and-proper review, you hear it before you pay for it. Telling a client what they want to hear is the most expensive kind of advice.
Confidentiality as a working method
Client information is handled on a need-to-know basis across the whole chain of providers, and disclosure obligations are mapped in advance so nobody is surprised by what a register, a bank or an exchange of information actually requires.
What makes this different from a company-formation agent
Incorporation is a commodity. Anyone can sell you a Cyprus company. The difference shows up six months later.
We build for the second stage, not the first
The first stage is registration and it is easy. The second stage is the EMI that asks for a group chart with ultimate beneficial owners, the bank that re-papers the account after two years, the tax authority that asks where management and control actually sit, and the auditor who wants the transfer-pricing file. Structures that were designed only for stage one break at stage two.
Legal, tax and banking are designed together
A structure that is elegant for tax and unbankable is worthless. A structure that opens accounts easily but cannot support a licence application is a dead end. These constraints are resolved together at the design stage, which is the only stage where resolving them is cheap.
Regulated work is routed to regulated firms
Where a mandate requires a licensed administrative service provider, a regulated fiduciary, a statutory auditor or counsel admitted in another jurisdiction, that role is performed by an appropriately licensed firm engaged for the purpose. We coordinate it and stand behind the design; we do not pretend to hold every licence.
You get the file, not just the outcome
At the end of a mandate you hold the documents, the reasoning and the compliance file — organised so that the next bank, the next auditor or the next adviser can pick it up without starting from zero. Dependency on your adviser is not a business model we are interested in.
Who we typically act for
The practice is built around clients whose structures have to withstand scrutiny, not merely exist.
- Founders of fintech, payment and crypto-asset businesses building toward an EMI, PI or MiCA-scope authorisation
- iGaming operators and suppliers who need a licensing route that their payment providers will actually accept
- Established groups restructuring after the Cyprus 2026 tax reform, or re-testing a holding structure that was designed under the old rules
- Trading and services companies that need genuine substance in Cyprus rather than a registered address and a mailbox
- HNWI and their families planning relocation, tax residency and the non-domicile position alongside the corporate structure
- Businesses that have been de-risked or offboarded by a bank or EMI and need the file rebuilt before approaching the next one
- Investors and shareholders who need nominee arrangements inside a fully disclosed, register-compliant structure
- Companies preparing for an audit, a due-diligence exercise or a transaction where the corporate history will be read closely
Direct answers
Is SK Consult a law firm?
SK Consult is a consulting practice founded and led by a lawyer. Where a mandate requires a licensed administrative service provider, a regulated fiduciary, a statutory auditor, or counsel admitted in a particular jurisdiction, that role is performed by an appropriately licensed firm engaged for the purpose, and you are told which firm holds which role. In Cyprus, administrative service providers are regulated by ICPAC, the Cyprus Bar Association or CySEC depending on the provider's primary profession.
What languages do you actually work in?
English, Russian and Ukrainian — including drafting, correspondence with banks and regulators, and review of documents produced by others. This site is maintained in all three. Formal filings in Cyprus are made in the language the relevant authority requires.
Do you only work with Cyprus?
No. Cyprus is the base and often the answer, but it is not automatically the answer. The jurisdictions page sets out the criteria we use to choose, and a fair number of mandates end up combining an EU entity with a non-EU operating company, or moving in the opposite direction entirely.
How quickly can you start?
For a structuring mandate, the first substantive conversation usually happens within a few working days of an enquiry, and it is a conversation about your facts rather than a sales call. Timelines after that are driven by registrars, banks and regulators, and are set out in writing before work begins.
Will you tell me if my plan is a bad idea?
Yes, and early. Most of the value in this kind of work is in the structures that never get built. If what you are describing will not survive onboarding, an audit or a residency challenge, hearing that in the first meeting is cheaper than hearing it from a bank two years later.
What happens to my information?
It is handled on a need-to-know basis across the chain of providers, and the disclosure obligations that genuinely apply — beneficial-ownership registers, bank onboarding, exchange of information — are mapped for you in advance. Cyprus register access, for example, was restricted following the Court of Justice judgment of 22 November 2022 and is now governed by the legitimate-interest regime; we explain what that means for your specific facts rather than in the abstract.
Where to go next
This page describes the practice and the general regulatory picture as at July 2026. It is general information, not legal or tax advice, and it does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Rules change and outcomes depend on facts — get in touch before acting.
