First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov is no longer just a man. His surname is also a trademark as of Nov. 11. But, registered by the state patent agency Ukrpatent, the trademark arbuzov is not actually owned by Ukraine's top official, his relatives or assistants.
According
to Ukrpatent’s database, copyright for his trademark belongs to a little-known
non-governmental organization called the Institute for Financial and Economic
Research. Interestingly, one of the group’s co-owners is an in-house lawyer at Capital
newspaper, which was has been tied by media reports to Arbuzov.
Arbuzov has
denied having any connection to Capital.
Many of
Ukraine’s politicians register their names as trademarks. In 2009, for example,
Viktor Baloga, the former presidential chief of staff for Viktor Yushchenko,
registered the English transliteration of his name as a trademark. In 2011,
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov did the same.
Independent
website INSIDER has suggested that Arbuzov will now get a personal website in
the Ukrainian .ua domain because registering a trademark is an essential
precondition for doing it. Azarov launched a personal website soon after his name
became a trademark.
The biggest
difference, though, is that Azarov and Baloga registered their trademarks
personally, while Arbuzov got his registered with the help of the Institute for
Financial and Economic Research, itself registered in September 2012.
But the self-proclaimed
think tank does have a direct connection to Arbuzov – or, rather, many tangled
ones.
The group’s
director is Alina Komarovych, who is also one of its three co-founders. She and other organization’s co-owners also co-founded a number of non-profit organizations with similar-sounding
names. They are the Institute of Financial Expertise, Center for Economic
Analysis and Financial Expertise, and Institute for Social and Economic Modeling.
The other
co-founder of some of these organizations is Larysa Komarovych, who, in turn,
co-founded Partiya Truda (Labor Party), according to INSIDER website. Another
co-founder of this party is Roman Kostrytsya, who was named by Forbes Ukraine
and Ekonomichna Pravda journalists as a political consultant for Arbuzov.
Kostrytsya
did not comment on his relationship with Arbuzov, but in 2009-2010 he
officially co-owned Revolution Media
company along with Oleksandr
Kutereshchyn, Arbuzov’s spokesman.
Kutereshchyn was not available for comment.
A man by the name of Mykola Feoklistov is a co-founder of the think tank
that registered Arbuzov’s trademark. In
September 2012 he became director of BP Plus, a company co-founded in 2010 by
Kostrytsya and Dmytro Dorofeev.
Dorofeev is
the lawyer who was the initial owner of Dilova Presa Krainy and Novyi Poglyad
Krainy that control Capital and Vzglyad newspapers, respectively.
Feoklistov
is currently is an in-house lawyer at Capital newspaper. Feoklistov did not
explain why he registered the trademark on behalf of Arbuzov and, when
contacted by the Kyiv Post, he was surprised that the newspaper discovered his
connection to the trademark.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Kateryna Kapliuk can be reached at [email protected].
