Editor's Note: The thinly disguised corruption and corporate raiding that took place in Ukraine - and still does - was never more clearly highlighted than in the case of Gala Rada, whose American owner Joseph Lemire, ended up winning a court case for restitution of his business losses.
The director of embattled Gala Radio called for U.S. sanctions against Ukraine Tuesday Oct. 21 after state broadcasting authorities in Kyiv denied the partly U.S.-owned station the right to use its own name and logo.
Gala Director Joseph Lemire, an American, said the pop music station’s lawyers attended a meeting at the office of the Ukrainian Patents Appeal Committee on Oct. 20, confident that the year-long battle over the rights to the Gala name and logo was all but won.
Ukrainian officials had previously indicated that the decision would be in the station’s favor.
Instead, the station received a ‘slap in the face,’ according to Lemire. He said the committee had voted against the station after state officials presented documents stating that a rival station using the Gala name, run by the Leader Company, had a better claim to the name because it had been in existence longer.
The hits kept coming when later on Tuesday council officials informed Lemire’s lawyers that his station would not be granted licenses to operate in Odessa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv, four cities in which it had planned to start broadcasting next week.
Furthermore, the council said it had found additional fault with the station, but would not go into details as to what these violations were, according to Lemire.
An official in the office of National Television and Radio Council President Viktor Petrenko refused to comment on the Gala case.
Lemire on Tuesday called for U.S. government sanctions against the Ukrainian government.
‘It’s time for the U.S. government to take actual action against Ukraine,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of weapons in the diplomatic arsenal.’
Lemire also appealed to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Green Miller and Ambassador Richard Morningstar, the White House advisor on the former Soviet Union who is in Kyiv this week as head of the Gore-Kuchma Commission on U.S.-Ukrainian Cooperation.
Morningstar declined to comment on the Gala case.
However, Miller stated that U.S. officials are currently looking into the situation.
‘We have met with [Lemire] and his lawyers and we are discussing the issue with the Ukrainians,’ he said. ‘We are just getting to what happened [this week]. We need to unravel the facts and figure out where to go from there.’
Deputy Prime Minister Serhy Tyhypko, who was present at the National Television and Radio Council’s meetings with Lemire’s lawyers, said that the Ukrainian government is waiting to get complete information before determining whether Lemire’s station should have the right to the Gala name.
Entering the fray on Tuesday, the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, of which Gala Radio is a member, wrote a letter to President Leonid Kuchma asking that he personally look into the case.
‘It has recently been brought to our attention that Gala Radio has lost both its copyrighted name and broadcasting licenses on the territory of Ukraine,’ read the letter, which was signed by Greg Perchatsch, vice president of AmCham and country manager for U.S. communications technology firm Motorola. ‘We would appreciate it if your staff could look into the circumstances surrounding these events and to correct any wrongs that may have occurred.’
Lemire said he had been informed by Morningstar that Kuchma had agreed to personally take up the matter. He also said Morningstar was expected to deliver the AmCham letter to Kuchma on Wednesday Oct. 22.
Meanwhile Gala’s lawyers said being denied the rights to use the name could eventually take the station off the air altogether.
Lemire said that changing the station’s name would be a huge setback, with marketing having to begin from scratch.
‘Our name is our number one asset, and all the ratings are based on it,’ he said. ‘The Ukrainian government ruled to expropriate our number one asset. This was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.’
Lemire’s troubles began in July 1996 when the National Television and Radio Council pulled his station’s FM broadcast of the Atlanta Olympic games off the air and granted a daytime broadcasting license for the FM 100 frequency, which had been assigned to Lemire’s Gala, to the Leader concern.
The rival Gala was formed by Gleb Matulin, Lemire’s former commercial director and representative to the national council.
Subsequently, Lemire’s Gala regained FM 100 air time after a protracted struggle with broadcasting authorities.
