The daily news bulletin Ukrinform Business News stopped going out to subscribers Monday July 14 amid conflicting accusations of censorship and financial wrongdoing.
Editor Mykhailo Kolomiyets sent clients a letter blaming DINAU agency Director Oleksandr Savenko for shutting down the service for political reasons. DINAU is the state information agency that put out the news bulletin in partnership with the private company Epo-Most.
We think that closure of Ukrinform Business News is directly connected with the problem of freedom of speech in Ukraine, Savenko wrote in the Ukrainian version of the letter, which differed somewhat from the English version.
The letter said that Ukrinform Business News employees had been barred from the DINAU building, where they had their office. It said the computers and telephones they had been using were disconnected.
Savenko offered a very different version of events. In an interview Tuesday July 22, he said production of the news bulletin had ceased due to financial machinations on the part of Kolomiyets and Epo-Most.
He said under a 1995 contract, the English-, Ukrainian- and Russian-language news bulletin was meant to be a joint project between Epo-Most and DINAU, with profits split equally between the two. DINAU was to provide office space, computers, telephones and information resources, while Epo-Most was to perform all editorial and marketing functions, he said.
According to the contract, Epo-Most was supposed to make sure the bulletin had at least 45 subscribers, otherwise it would be lossmaking, Savenko said.
He said that in early July Epo-Most informed DINAU that the bulletin had only 18 subscribers in the first half of 1997, and that in the second half the number had dwindled to six. DINAU took the numbers to be falsifications, said Savenko.
He said at that point Kolomiyets showed him a list of 71 clients, which he said only proved to him that Kolomiyets and Epo-Most were deceiving DINAU. He said this also indicated to him that Kolomiyets, a DINAU economist and thus a state employee, was illegally working directly for Epo-Most, a private firm.
How can one trust a man who gives three different figures for one situation? asked Savenko.
Savenko said that in the coming months publication of Ukrinform Business News will resume with new partners. In his letter, Kolomiyets assured clients that production will resume soon and the independent Ukrinform agency will restart operations.
Neither Kolomiyets nor members of the Epo-Most staff could not be reached for comment.
