Despite his confusing speech and spelling mistakes, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych manages to rack up millions of dollars in income on books that few people see or read.
His book
copyright royalties exceeded Hr 15.5 million (about $1.9 million), most of his
declared income in 2012. Yanukovych made Hr 20.388 million (about $2.5 million)
last year, according to his tax declaration published on April 1 on the president’s
website.
This sum was
four times more than the joint income of U.S. President Barak Obama and his
wife Michelle, who in 2012 earned $608,611, according to their tax declaration.
But
Ukraine’s professional writers and political analysts doubt Yanukovych’s
literary success.
In 2011,
Yanukovych’s English-speaking “Opportunity Ukraine” book, represented as a guide
for investors, sparked a scandal, with accusations of plagiarism involving other
politicians’ speeches and magazine articles.
Last year,
Ukraine’s president received huge royalties for his four other little-known books
called “Year in Opposition: There Are no Final Wins or Losses in Politics,” “…And Year
in Power: From Crisis to Economic Growth,” “Way to Overcome” and “How to Live
on in Ukraine,” written and published in 2005-2010 by various publishing
offices.
Donetsk-based
printing house Novy Mir bought the rights for these books as well as his future
works. The same printing house also paid to Yanukovych Hr 16.4 million in
royalties in 2011.
Novy Mir
refused comment. The website of this printing house doesn’t mention book publishing.
It says the company prints advertisements, cardboard packages, newspapers and magazines,
including Shakhtar football club magazine, owned by the richest Ukrainian and
Yanukovych’s longtime ally Rinat Akhmetov.
Political
analyst Volodymyr Fesenko called these huge royalties declared by Yanukovych a
“form of legalization of his revenues” and said it was done “in rather awkward
way.”
“But he
already did so a year ago and it worked,” Fesenko said.
Such criticisim
doesn’t seem to bother Ukraine’s president.
Asked about
his books during the March 1 press conference, Yanukovych claimed that he gave most
of this money for charity, telling a TVi journalist that “you are a young
person and have many years ahead to live.”
As Zerkalo
Nedeli weekly counted, based on the average royalties in Ukraine, the printing
house has to publish around 6.4 million copies of these books to make a profit.
But up to now, Yanukovych’s are hard to find in bookstores or libraries.
No Ukrainian
authors have managed to sell so many copies of their books, the experts say.
Ukrainian
publishers Vitaliy and Dmytro Kapranovs said in an interview with TVi channel that
the largest number of book copies published in Ukraine was a novel by Ukrainian
classic writer Pavlo Zahrebelny, who published in 500,000 copies as far back as
in Soviet times.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
