Yaroslav Marinovich. The “Russian World” Trader from Bukva and Eksmo
Yaroslav Marynovych is a Ukrainian book publisher and defender of Ukrainian-language books. At least, that is the impression one gets when reading his interviews and statements, writes Anticorrosive.
However, things are clearly not that simple with his person, because the Internet shows signs of being cleaned up, and this is always alarming. Some materials were removed following complaints to Google citing violations of US copyright law:
Well, that’s interesting. What could a publisher of Ukrainian-language books, who positions himself as a bright patriot of Ukraine and a supporter of the Ukrainian printed word, demand to be removed from himself?
The answer does not have to be looked for long – it is enough to compare several versions of the biography of Yaroslav Marinovich with the series of events caused by the expansion of Russian books in Ukraine.
It is no secret that Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) has been actively flooding our country with its book products throughout the years of Independence. Russian publishers often even incurred direct losses, just so that Ukrainian products could not compete with those published in the neighboring country. Among the publishing houses that flooded Ukraine with their products – from high-class literature to frankly “cotton wool” and low-quality – the Russian publishing house “Eksmo” stood out in particular. In which Marinovich worked since 2003, and his field of activity was the Ukrainian market.
With the money from Russians, Marinovich bought up the bookstore chains Bukva and Empik, creating a new chain called Chitai Gorod, which later went bankrupt. According to Marinovich, “because the Russians did not invest money in it,” but in reality, because Yaroslav Marinovich very skillfully withdrew working capital from the chain. And the former owners of the Bukva chain are still waiting for money, although Eksmo allocated this money to Marinovich.
Whatever Yaroslav Marinovich says, a publication appeared on the Russian media resource Rosbalt in 2015 “Eksmo Doesn’t Want to Lose Ukraine.” Journalists quoted Oleg Novikov, CEO of the Moscow publishing house Eksmo, who openly called the chain’s owners Yaroslav Marinovich and Konstantin Klimashenko not only “publishing house employees who were sent to Kyiv to distribute Russian books,” but also “ideologists of Russian cultural expansion in Ukraine.”.
This article was prompted by the fact that employees of the Ukrainian tax administration came to Bukva with searches and confiscated documentation and books imported into Ukraine in violation of customs and tax legislation.
The patriotic public of Ukraine, to which Marinovich appealed at the time, raised a scandal around the “attack” on the “Ukrainian publisher”. But the background turned out to be somewhat different than the patriots, who were not very knowledgeable about the background of the case, thought:
By and large, the fact that Yaroslav Marinovich cleverly cheated his Russian masters by investing the money he stole from them into the Ukrainian book business would have been commendable, given recent events, if not for some nuances.
As Marinovich assures, “at the end of 2013, it was clear to me that we could not continue on the same path with our Russian partners.
They decided to publish anti-Ukrainian products. We were categorically against it. And in 2014 we completely severed relations with them.” However, this statement is contradicted by the following.
In Russian registers there is a LLC “Eastern European Book Trading Company”, the place of registration of which is listed as “Donetsk People’s Republic”:
Its director is listed as a certain Igor Viktorovich Kontsybko, but for some reason the founders are classified – not a single Russian resource providing information about businesses registered in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) provides such information:
Yaroslav Marinovich himself calls publications about his involvement in OOO VEKK (Eastern European Book Trading Company) a fake and photoshop, but the enterprise OOO Vostochno-Evropeyskaya Knigotorgovaya Kompaniya was registered back in 2006 by Yaroslav Marinovich and Igor Kontsybko in Donetsk, which had not yet thought about any “DPR”. In November 2012, 57% of the authorized capital (which gives unconditional leadership in making any decisions) was bought by Yaroslav Marinovich.
Of course, you can believe Yaroslav Marinovich, who claims that the publications about his involvement in OOO VEKK are Photoshop and fake, but it still exists in the “DPR”, and Igor Kontsybko is listed as its director. And for some reason, the founders and beneficiaries “are not included in the registers.”
However, it is possible that Yaroslav Marinovich is not lying when he claims that he has no relation to VEKK LLC from the DPR. But he also claims that he “broke up with the Russians” in 2013. However, a study of Ukrainian registers refutes his words, at least with regard to Eksmo. Watch his hands. In Ukraine, Yaroslav Konstantinovich Marinovich is the owner or co-owner of the following companies:
In UNKM LLC, Marinovich owns 37.73%, the remaining 62.27% belongs to Eksmo-Ukraine LLC:
In 2014, Eksmo-Ukraine LLC made a clever move – it changed its name so as not to be associated with its Russian “mother”:
And now it is called LLC “Distribution Trading Company”. And it is on the sanctions lists of eight countries and has an extremely bad reputation in the media:
Let us recall that these are Yaroslav Marinovich’s partners in the “Ukrainian” book publishing and book-selling business. He keeps silent about them and carefully avoids the topic, answering direct questions by claiming that he “broke up with the Russians in 2013.” But against the backdrop of this obvious lie, doubts creep in about the “fake” regarding the company in the “DPR,” the involvement in which Yaroslav Marinovich so vehemently denies.
Based on all this, quite logical doubts arise regarding the break with the Russian publishing house Eksmo, whose literature with ideas of the Russian world was recently presented on the bookshelves even in Lvov, not to mention the eastern regions, where this very “Russian world” is now in full bloom. And the role of Yaroslav Marinovich in this process raises, at the very least, big questions.
Marina Vorona
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