Forbes Ukraine found itself in the midst of controversy after it removed Oleksandr Yanukovych, the president’s elder son, from a list of people whose companies have won the most orders from the state-owned railway monopoly in the first five months of 2013.
The
publication still lists Yanukovych as
the overall leader in public procurement contracts on its
website ranking.
The article
titled, Akhmetov, Pinchuk,
Yeremeyev and Others: Who Wins Ukrzaliznytsya Tenders? appeared
on
Forbes.ua on May 28. The story analyzed relationships between
companies and
their owners that won contracts from Ukrzaliznytsya, the
state-owned railways
monopoly. It also included a table that listed the main
companies and their
owners.
According to
Forbes, the top beneficiary
was PTK or First Fuel Company, which reportedly is closely
associated with Yanukovych.
According to Forbes, he had sold Ukrzaliznytsya diesel oil,
boiler oil, coal
and other goods for Hr 3.1 billion ($387.5 million),
approximately a third of
all Ukrzaliznytsya’s procurements in the first 5 months of 2013.
But the story
disappeared from Forbes.ua on
the same day. However, it was still available on Google’s cached
pages. Later on
May 28 the analysis re-appeared online, only without
Yanukovych’s son listed in
the table.
The newly
edited story still mentions
Yanukovych but does not closely associate him with PTK.
“PTK is
registered by Altana limited
company, which is owned by… Anatoliy Amelin. Amelin is also
the owner of
Stolychnyi Styl, another company which is 50 percent owned by
the Capital
building corporation owned by Oleksandr Yanukovych. In June
2012, 42-year-old
Donetsk resident Vsevolod Momot became the sole owner of PTK,”
reads the only section
of the article with Yanukovych’s name.
Forbes said in
hindsight that the link
between PTK and the president’s son was not strong enough.
“I have taken
the story off (the web)
because it was incomplete,” said Volodymyr Fedorin on Facebook,
chief
editor of Forbes.ua.
“When and if
Forbes will have
indisputable evidence that PTK is Yanukovych’s or somebody
else’s, we will
write about it. There is no censorship when it comes to stories
with
iron-strong proof of Yanukovych’s or anyone else’s connection
with companies or
events. As we in Forbes say, it should be nail-stong,” said
Sergiy
Golovin, who wrote the Forbes.ua story.
Other media
have reported on the close
association between Yanukovych’s son and PTK which has been
referred to as the
main player on the railway market. Ukrainska Pravda, a top news
website, has
run several stories on Yanukovych and the railway market.
Forbes earlier
estimated that Yanukovych is
worth $187 million and is the 59th richest
Ukrainian. His fortune started to
skyrocket after his father became president in February 2010.
Forbes Ukraine
is owned by UMH Group. The
parent company has found itself in controversy connected with
the president’s surname
before. In February, an issue of Focus magazine, also owned by
UMH group,
disappeared from newsstands and a story about the president
vanished from the
magazine’s website.
That story
focused on some of the most
bizarre public procurement orders made for the president. It
reported on the Hr
900,000 of taxpayers’ money that was spent on flowers for
official events, Hr
343 million to renovate two state residences in Crimea, and Hr
7.5 million for
leasing an Augusta 139 helicopter. This is just a tiny part of
the president’s Hr
1.2 billion budget that taxpayers cover each year.
After these
and other findings came out,
readers complained that the magazine started disappearing from
newsstands over the
weekend following its publication. And the electronic version of
the article disappeared
from the magazine’s website shortly after publication.
The
procurement story about Yanukovych came
back online on Feb. 25 following a public outcry, and its chief
editor said
hard copies of the magazine were available for purchase in
kiosks and other
places of distribution.
UMH Group
acknowledged in a statement that
20 percent of the magazine’s print run of 32,000 was recalled,
citing technical
problems.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska
can be reached at
[email protected]
