The SBU did not find any connections with Russians at the Bookchef publishing house – News

The identity of the Bookchef publishing house

Publishing house Bookchef reported that the Security Service of Ukraine did not find documentary evidence of his cooperation with Russia. Earlier, a request for an investigation was submitted by a people’s deputy Roman Lozynskyi.

The publishing house published a copy of the letter from the SBU and the Commercial Court of Kyiv on social networks.

“There are no documented data on the possible connections of the Limited Liability Company “Bukshef Publishing House” with the aggressor state (Russia) on the day of processing the deputy’s appeal“, the letter stated.

The SBU’s investigation was connected to another publishing house’s court case – Bookchef filed a lawsuit against Yakabu Trade LLC, whose bankruptcy affected a number of publishing houses. As noted in Bookchef, Yakabu is indebted to publishers.

The details of the court case were published on the Opendatabot resource, where it is noticeable that the Security Service of Ukraine was involved after the appeal of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine Roman Lozynskyi. So, on January 17, 2024, the state body was obliged to conduct an investigation and consider the request.

The document with information about the publishing house’s non-involvement in cooperation with the Russians was signed by the head of the Legal Support Department Oleksandr Lakhvatskyi.

Relations of Ukrainian publishing houses with Russians

Previously, the journalists of the “Sensor” media together with the OSINT agency Molfar investigated that there are still book companies operating on the Ukrainian market that continue to do business with Russia. As noted in the investigation, among them are two publishing houses – Bookchef and “Fors Ukraine”, as well as the online bookstore book24.ua.

The companies Bookchef and book24.ua are registered in the name of 81-year-old Ukrainian Lyudmila Bozhko and have separate beneficiaries, Bozhko’s daughter Natalia Plekhova and her husband Andrii Plekhova. Nataliya Plekhova registered an FOP in Moscow, conducts business with the aggressor country and has Russian citizenship since April 2022. Andriy Plekhov has a registered card of the Russian Sberbank, and the books of the publishers printed in 2022 can be found on Russian services such as WildBerries.

After the release of the investigation, the Yakaboo book platform, the “E” bookstore, the KSD, Vivat book chains, as well as the Readeat bookstore, announced the termination of cooperation with this publishing house. As we learned in Chitomo, most of them were waiting for the investigation to be refuted.