Amkodor demands to punish Nasha Niva

• 12.04.2012, 13:01

An article “Millionaire with lancet” about an oligarch Alyaksandr Shakutsin (Alexander Shakutin) has provoked indignation at Amkodor.

A few days later, on April 14, the term of the warning issued to Nasha Niva newspaper by the Information Ministry of Belarus in 2011 expires. We remind that a threat to be closed was hanging over Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya then. Only one official warning to the editorial office would be still valid, for the postal code printed in July 2011. In such a case officials would not have formal grounds to demand liquidation of the newspaper any moment. And on April 11 the editorial office of the independent newspaper received a copy of a letter with a demand to issue a new warning to the newspaper.

The editorial office received a copy of the letter signed by Amkodor JSC director general Valery Kandratchyk (Valeriy Kondratchik), sent on April 9, 2012 to Information Minister Aleh Pralyaskouski. In his letter the head of Amkodor “earnestly asked” to issue a warning to Nasha Niva for dissemination of untrustworthy information, and “to adopt other measures as provided for by the legislation.”

And what was the cause of the angry reaction of the director general? Kandratchyk was outraged by the article “Millionaire with Lancet” about his chief, Amkodor’s chairman of the board of directors, a “Senator” Alyaksandr Shakutsin. The article was published in the issue Nr 13 (754) of Nasha Niva on April 4, 2012.

First it should be reminded what is “untrustworthy information” under the law “On Mass Media”. These are informational reports or materials which do not reflect the actual situation (are untrue). A warning can be issued to a newspaper for publishing such information, in case this unreliable information can “damage the interests of the state or the society.” Or “denigrate honour, dignity and business reputation of real persons or legal entities.”

Amkodor is a private enterprise. It has nothing to do with state interests, and it is far from interests of the society as well. So, the reports of Nasha Niva have denigrated “honour, dignity and business reputation” of Amkodor. How has it been done specifically?

There are as many as 7 claims in the letter. In the first of them Amkodor refutes the fact that in 2009 the company bought a plant near Vilnius, and its implication in founding of Amkodor-Baltic. Well, let’s offer Shakutsin to speak for himself: “In 2009 we bought two plants. The first one was Pobyarzhski plant of agricultural machinery (Lithuania), which is Amkodor-Baltic enterprise now. It is situated 20 kilometers away from Vilnius.” He said so in an interview to BelTA correspondent on October 29, 2009. So who else bought Pobyarzhski plant then, if not Shakutsin?

Amkodor’s honour and dignity are also “denigrated” by a misprint in the business name, Amkodor-Unimod, and by the fact that Amkodor-Unikab is considered to be in Minsk, not in Maladzechna.

The enterprise has also decided to defend a Nepali Upendra Makhato, who was called in the article the major shareholder of the concern.

“In reality Mr. Makhato is not a shareholder of Amkodor JSC,” Valery Kandratchyk reminds, but for some reason he does not specify that the Nepali is the chairman of the board of directors of the investment company which owns the controlling block of stock.

Open Figures

Amkodor director demonstrates wonders of mathematics. “It is written in the article that the general number of employees… is more than 5,000,” Kandratchyk complains. “However as of April 1 the number of employees was 6,226, which is 25% more than in the article.” Let us use common logics and knowledge of the elementary school.

6,226 employees is a figure close to 5,000. What is the fault of Nasha Niva then?

The next complaint is even more eloquent: “The information has been presented one-sidedly.” According to Lukashenka’s decree, Amkodor was allowed to buy three plants at $1.5 mln. Valery Kandratchyk believes that instead of calling this sum “a token sum”, Nasha Niva was to stress Amkodor’s social responsibility. It turns out that the company was to invest in the enterprises 22 billion rubles in the next five years, promise to keep unchanged the number of employees at the plants bought, and even to increase the volume of output from 2.5 to 5 times. It’s alright; they may increase the volume of output tenfold. But why the sum of $1.5 mln for the three plants could not be called a token one? After all, it is a right of journalists to give evaluation.

Every quarter the Finance Ministry of Belarus publishes accounts on activities of all joint stock companies of the country. And they demonstrate that Amkodor does not pay a ruble of dividends to its shareholders. According to the documents of 2010 and 2011 (three quarters) the net income of Amkodor was more than $40 mln. And Valery Kandratchyk without any reference to concrete documents says his company earned half as many.

But the newspaper’s information is based on open and accessible sources.

Have Shakutsin and Kandratchyk taken offence?

The next sore spot is Shakutsin’s participation in financing of Eurofest song competition, which results turned out to be falsified. “Not without knowledge and desire of Alyaksandr Shakutsin I asked him, the Minister of Culture and the head of the Belarusian TV and Radio Company to organize this process in a appropriate way and to find those who could present our country at that competition in a decent way,” Alyaksandr Lukashenka fumed. “As far as I know, Alyaksandr Shakutsin helped to organize this competition, and by finances as well.”

Journalists do not have more information on this subject than the leader of the state – the Belarusian TV and Radio Company has not offered financial accounts on carrying out Eurofest.

And the last thing, a mistake with pictures. Instead of a picture of Shakutsin, a picture of Amkodor director Kandratchyk was published on the first and fifth pages of the newspaper. The reason was that Nasha Niva had bought that picture from BelTA, an informational agency, and the grey-haired man was called Shakutsin by them. In this situation there was an inaccuracy, the newspaper trusted the news agency too much. In the next issue of Nasha Niva correction was published. And it is interesting whether Amkodor has asked to issue a warning for BelTA agency as well, or is it righteous anger is focused on the independent newspaper only? It is also interesting to know whose dignity had been denigrated by this confusion. There are two variants.

Either director Kandratchyk was aggrieved that his fair face was given a name of Shakutsin, or Sneator Shakutsin decided that his business reputation was irreparably damaged by Kandratchyk’s image.