Criminal Story of a Prevention - Ukrainian Anti Cancer Institute

On the day of meeting the owner arrived and Nowicky was in with a good chance. The
man from Germany had been in Ukraine and had good memories of the country. More
particularly he had been forced to leave his home country, Romania, many years previously
and therefore knew of the difficulties faced by emigrants. He agreed to sell to Nowicky. With
a solicitor, in the presence of the agent, it was agreed that the purchase price should be paid
by 3 December, within a few weeks; otherwise the flat would be sold to someone else.
Nowicky left the agent’s office with the owner of the flat he had – at least
theoretically – bought. They walked a little way together and talked about various subjects.
As they said goodbye the owner told Nowicky that he should not worry about the date of
payment. If he had not raised the purchase price by 3 December he would still have an option
until the end of the month. There were no witnesses to this conversation. Nowicky was not at
all anxious – the bank had officially approved the loan. The day before the purchase was to go
through he received a telephone call from the bank. To his amazement he was told that he
could unfortunately not be granted the loan. However, if he had already entered into a binding
agreement he was advised to appeal.
In answer to Nowicky’s astonished ‘Why?’, he was given the mysterious information,
‘Check your post, there you will find the answer.’ In his post he found a letter from the tax
office saying that he had to make a back payment of € 72,000 tax on property.
With overdue tax payments it was clear that there could be no loan from the bank. But
where this tax payment came from remained a complete mystery to him. He would have to
own property with a value of € 7.2 million to receive such a tax demand – and there was no
question of that.
He then went to his accountant who was also mystified. However, a few days later,
after 3 December, the purchase date agreed in the presence of witnesses, he received a dryly
worded letter from the tax office that the demand had been a mistake.
Whoever had instigated all this, it did not work out. Nowicky was able to point to the
verbal agreement which the owner confirmed.
Nowicky now had no desire whatsoever to walk into any more traps and he managed
to raise the purchase price with the help of friends and his wife’s family. Now he finally had
an apartment from which nobody could throw him out. After protracted renovation work the
family was able to move in two years later.
He was, of course, not protected from other nasty surprises. One of these was provided
by his bank as he wanted to close a deal for Ukrain in Thailand.
A Thai pharmaceutical company wanted to make an agency agreement for Ukrain in
Asia following the ever more frequent reports on the drug at international conferences.
Nowicky was to send a large amount of Ukrain ampoules to Thailand as soon as the company
had transferred payment to his account. He needed confirmation from his bank that there was
in fact an account in the name of Nowicky. However, the bank refused to confirm this and
thereby ruined a potentially very lucrative deal.
A similar fate met a deal with Kuwait, where clinical studies had been carried out with
good results. Nowicky was supposed to deliver a large amount of Ukrain. This time the
Ministry of Health objected to the official confirmation that a company registered in the name
of Dr. Nowicky actually existed. At this time Nowicky had had approval since June 1988 to
enter his firm on the register of companies. However, he had not yet done so. The health
authorities were therefore formally within the law. In this case, the kind of advice whose lack
the Ministry of Science had so criticised was clearly indicated. The two registration officials
at the health authorities who knew Nowicky from many meetings would only have had to
phone him to tell him to register the company in order then to confirm its existence.
In this way the deal with Kuwait was successfully obstructed – and thereby also
further clinical studies - which could have helped cancer patients.
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