Business journalism pioneer Forbes Media has taken further steps to deny fugitive Serhiy Kurchenko and his Ukraine Media Holding publishing rights to the local edition of Forbes Ukraine, according to an emailed message that Forbes’ corporate communications head Mia Carbonell wrote to Liga news on Aug. 6.
The message
was in reference to U.S. government sanctions that were imposed on Kurchenko on
July 30, which prohibits U.S.-incorporated companies from doing business with
him, either directly or indirectly, through companies in which he has a 50
percent or greater interest.
As a result,
Forbes denied Kurchenko’s UMH, the publisher of Forbes Ukraine, “access to the
Forbes brand.”
“Forbes no
longer provides UMH authorized use of the Forbes brand for UMH’s website or
provides Forbes.ua http://forbes.ua domain name
services to UMH,” Carbonell wrote.
Ukrainian media portal liga.net published an emailed message on Aug. 6 from Forbes’ spokeswoman Mia Carbonell that says Serhiy Kurchenko’s UMH media holding has been deprived of its license to publish the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine.
The same
day, Forbes Ukraine changed its domain name to forbes.net.ua, and it contains
content under the Forbes brand as recent as Aug. 9 in the Russian language.
UMH said the
fact that Kurchenko has been sanctioned “has no bearing on the rights of UMH to
publish the magazine and use the brand name of Forbes,” the company said in
statement published on its website.
“UMH paid
for the (publishing) rights through the year 2018 and has the right to continue
using it,” the statement read.
Forbes Media
terminated the foreign-language license of Forbes Ukraine in 2014, but
Kurchenko challenged the action and continued to publish the magazine locally.
Kurchenko,
29, purchased Forbes in the summer of 2013 following a series of investigations
the magazine reported on his meteoric rise in Ukraine’s oil industry that
alleged he dodged taxes and had a monopolistic grip on the sector because of
political coverage – subsequent investigations by Ukrainska Pravda and other
Ukrainian media alleged he was a proxy for ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and
his allies.
Serhiy Kurchenko is wanted by Ukrainian authorities for large-scale property fraud and is presumably residing in Russia.
Once the acquisition
was finalized in November of that year, 13 Forbes Ukraine journalists resigned
after publishing an open letter that alleged the publication had enacted editorial
censorship policies.
Ukraine’s
Interior Ministry says Kurchenko, a native of Kharkiv, disappeared on Feb. 19,
2014 at the height of the popular uprising EuroMaidan Revolution that led to Yanukovych
abandoning office. The ministry’s wanted list says he is accused
of large-scale property fraud. Kurchenko is presumed to be living in
Russia.
In July 2014
the Forbes family sold a majority stake in its media empire to a collection of
investors led by Integrated Asset Management (Asia) Ltd., founded by investor
Tak Cheung Yam, Bloomberg reported citing a statement by Forbes. The
transaction was valued at $475 million.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can
be reached at [email protected].
