Viktor Pinchuk
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Viktor Mykhaylovych Pinchuk (Ukrainian: Віктор Михайлович Пінчук), one of the "Business oligarchs" who control post-Communist Ukraine, is the son-in-law of the ex-President Leonid Kuchma. Poland's weekly Wprost ranked him Central and Eastern Europe's 12th richest man, with a fortune of $1.5 billion. The second richest Ukrainian businessman,[1] Pinchuk is the founder and main owner of the Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine's leading steel industry groups also working in other fields of economy. Pinchuk is the owner of four TV channels and most popular tabloid, Fakty i Kommentarii. He has been a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, for two consecutive convocations, but failed to be re-elected in 2006.
Pinchuk is one of the major political-industrial figures coming from the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (along with Pavlo Lazarenko, Yulia Tymoshenko and others. (The other influential regional groups are the "Donetsk Group associated with the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, and the Surkis-Medvedchuk group based in Kiev). Pinchuk is in a permanent business conflict with the Privat Group also based in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
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[edit] Biography
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Born to Jewish parents who moved to the industrial town of Dnipropetrovsk after being denied the right to study in Kiev, Pinchuk started out as a metallurgy engineer specializing in the production of pipes. He says he "quickly became a relatively rich man for Soviet times", now owning the company where he got his first job back in Soviet times.
[edit] Orange Revolution
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The Austrian public relations agency that Pinchuk retains, according to Ukrainian media, was also the source circulating reports, stated to emanate from the Rudolfinerhaus hospital and reported by Reuters, denying the dioxin poisoning of presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The richest of Ukraine's oligarchs is Rinat Akhmetov.
[edit] External links
- GlobalSecurity.org: Ukraine political parties; Carnegie Endowment assessment in 2004
- Our Ukraine Newsletter: reformist opponents of Pinchuk's party
- Build Ukraine Newsletter
