In his 2011 income declaration, President Viktor Yanukovych said he got paid $2 million for the rights to four books and any future works from Donetsk-based publishing house Noviy Svit. Some think the deal is too sweet to be believed.
The man who misspelled “professor” as “proffesor” has declared himself one of Ukraine’s most well-paid authors.
In the five years after President Viktor Yanukovych made the spelling error on a application for his failed 2004 presidential bid, he wrote four books with titles such as “A Year in Office” and “How Ukraine Should Live On.”
In his income declaration for 2011, published on April 14, the president said Donetsk-based publishing house Noviy Svit had paid him Hr 16.4 million, or more than $2 million, for the copyright to those four books and any future works. This payment constituted 95 percent of his total declared income for the year.
Many Ukrainian writers and publishers say it is impossible to make anything close to this sum through sales for the few books that he published. They said it looked suspiciously like an attempt to disguise other income by laundering it as book royalties.
“In Ukraine, no one gets such royalties for a book,” said Dmytro Kapranov, a writer and a co-owner of publishing house Zelenyy Pes.
U.S. President Barack Obama made nearly $2.5 million in royalties in 2008, the year he shot to global fame, for his two books. Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pulled down $8 million advances each, but they were outdone by the late Pope John Paul II, who got $8.5 million for a 1994 book.
Kapranov said authors in Ukraine earn around 5-10 percent from sales of their publications. According to his basic calculations, this would mean each of the four books’ circulation should have reached at least a half-million copies, a figure unheard of on Ukraine’s book market.
In Ukraine, no one gets such royalties for a book.
– Dmytro Kapranov, a writer and a co-owner of publishing house Zelenyy Pes
Kapranov said the most recent publications by the country’s bestselling authors Lina Kostenko and Vasyl Shkliar reached 100,000 copies. The popular Ukrainian translations of books about Harry Potter had a slightly smaller circulation.
The circulation of the president’s publications is nowhere near as high, Kapranov added. “The publishing house did not get any commercial benefit from it. There was probably some other arrangement,” he said.
Noviy Svit is a little-known publisher from Yanukovych’s hometown of Donetsk. It came to prominence last fall when it was revealed to have paid an Austrian publishing house to print another book by Yanukovych, called “Opportunity Ukraine.”
The work was dogged by widespread allegations of plagiarism and is hard to find.
Some critics have speculated that Yanukovych may actually have not written any of the works, which covered a period when he was opposition leader and then prime minister.
“I’m not sure [Yanukovych] wrote a single line himself,” Andriy Kokotyukha, a popular writer, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Yanukovych has denied reports of plagiarism and moved to cool the scandal on April 15 by promising to donate the royalties to charity.
His spokeswoman, Darka Chepak, directed questions about the books to Noviy Svit, which didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.
Eduard Vakulenko, a representative of Noviy Svit, told Gazeta.ua that the deal with Yanukovych was a commercial project. He said the publisher was aware of the “risk” of paying royalties ahead of time for future books, but said that “memoirs of a figure of this magnitude” are bound to sell well.
Vakulenko said that the publishing house sold all the books by Yanukovych, but would not give any further details about who bought them and how much revenue it generated.
He also added that by the terms of the contract, Yanukovych is not obliged to write any more books.
The annual release of tax declarations by top officials is greeted with skepticism by critics, who accuse many of hiding their wealth, declaring small incomes but leading lavish lifestyles.
Odesa Mayor Oleksiy Kostusev declared an income of roughly Hr 100,000 ($12,500) for 2011, alongside ownership of a 724 square meter house, a 126 square meter apartment and two cars, including a Mercedes-Benz.
Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, currently in jail on abuse-of-office charges, also used to declare insignificant income, despite her taste for designer clothes and the fact she lived in a mansion in a posh residential area outside Kyiv.
She claimed to be renting the house and attributed her other spending to money she made as a businesswoman in the 1990s.
Yanukovych has also raised eyebrows with his extravagant lifestyle.
Despite never having worked in private business, he owns a townhouse in the Mezhyhiria estate, which experts have estimated to be worth millions of dollars. Yanukovych claims to own just the townhouse within the estate, a guarded and fenced off territory.
But news website Ukrainska Pravda has raised suspicions that the president is the real owner of the entire sprawling mansion and recreation complex, which is owned by firms with alleged connections to his elder son, Oleksandr.
Earlier this month, the website published photographs of what it said was a luxurious lakeside clubhouse at the Mezhyhiria complex, including chandeliers priced at $100,000. Yanukovych has denied owning any property, except the townhouse, within the compound.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].
