The book 'wot Yanukovyhc rote'

So the translator of Yanukovych's latest book, 'Opportunity Ukraine', has now taken the blame for this piece of blatant plagiarism.

After denials of plagiarism by presidential administration spokesperson Hanna Herman and the subsequent scandal that flared up in the international press, someone had to be made the fall guy.

The translator of the book, Konstyantyn Vasylkevych, now admits he omitted references to sources because: "It was necessary to make the book more convenient to read."

LEvko says everyone knows that Yanukovych is not a well-read man capable of writing book of several hundreds of pages. Nothing wrong in that. I recall when Yanukovych had to write a comment in a visitors book several years ago in a European city, he discreetly pulled out a little crib-sheet to make sure he did not make any spelling mistakes...Nothing wrong with that either..
But to claim authorship of a trashy piece of plagiarism shows Yanukovych is losing his sense of reality, and is becoming self-delusional, which is dangerous..And a panglossian book, intended to encourage sceptical foreigners and hard-nosed businessmen to invest in Ukraine, will have quite the opposite effect..

p.s. "The book what I wrote" is the title of a book about two well-loved British comedians - so, strictly no plagiarism in this blog..

Update on oil platform scandal

In late May and early June I posted several blogs [here, here, here] about an alleged scam, exposed by the 'Dzerkalo Tyzhnya' newspaper, involving the purchase of an oil drilling platform for hundreds of millions of dollars via a highly dubious off-shore company, all overseen by odious energy minister Yuriy Boyko.

Now Stan Gorin, a director of the off-shore name-plate company, 'Highway Investment Processing LLP', whose registered offices are over a plumber's merchant between a Chinese take-away and a tattoo parlour in Cardiff, Wales, claims he has received no money, has never been in Ukraine, and has nothing to do with drilling platforms, even though Ukrainian National Joint Stock Company'Chornomornaftogaz' has has already paid $202 million into his company's bank account 'up-front' for the drilling platform.

At the time the story broke, Boyko claimed the story had been 'commissioned' in order to discredit him. He promised to refer the matter to the Ukrainian State Security [SBU] for investigation so that the instigators of this 'disgraceful muck-raking' could be revealed.

Its now seems that the matter was investigated - not by the SBU, because they are headed by Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, a financial/political associate of Boyko's, but by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

To date no-one has been named as the alleged [fictional?] commissioner of this story, and 'Dzerkalo Tyzhnya' has not been told to retract their story..