Six companies have applied to participate in a state competition for the management rights over UMH, once the leading media holding in Ukraine, which previously belonged to fugitive oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko.
The state agency charged with recovering and managing stolen assets is also waiting for a package of documents from a seventh potential bidder, it said in a July 9 press release.
One of the current bidders is 1+1 Internet, a company of the 1+1 Media Group controlled by billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
Another media holding, Ukraina, owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, has demanded that the competition be canceled, calling it “a covert transfer of broadcasting licenses that contradicts the law on television and radio broadcasting.”
In Ukraine, broadcasting licenses are issued on a competitive basis through an open tender. Ukraina threatened to take the dispute to court.
In September 2019, Kyiv’s Pechersk Court transferred the management rights over UMH’s assets to the national asset management agency. The assets have been arrested by court since December 2017, after state prosecutors claimed that the $400 million that Kurchenko paid to buy UMH in 2013 had been illegally gained.
Kurchenko has been accused of tax evasion and fraud in gas deals. It is believed that he made a fortune thanks to his ties and loyalty to former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted from power during the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014. Kurchenko’s companies were allegedly involved in money laundering for Yanukovych and his inner circle.
In 2013, UMH lost some of its best journalists, who quit the Korrespondent magazine and Forbes Ukraine after Kurchenko bought the corporate rights. In 2015, Forbes Media revoked the publishing rights from UMH after Kurchenko was sanctioned by Ukraine and the European Union and placed on a wanted list.
Although the golden years of UMH Holding seem to be in the past, the winner of the upcoming competition will receive a vast package of assets: 72 legal entities (newspapers, radio stations, magazines and websites), shares, intellectual property rights on 283 trademarks, non-residential premises and printing equipment.
Until 2013, UMH belonged to its founder, Kharkiv-born businessman Boris Lozhkin.
