Valery Tsepkalo

Valery Tsepkalo (Belarusian: Валерый Цапкала, romanized: Valeryj Capkala, Russian: Валерий Цепкало; born 22 February 1965) is a Belarusian diplomat and executive, one of the initiators and lead creator of Belarus Hi-Tech Park.[1][2] From 1997 to 2002 he served as Ambassador to the United States of America and to Mexico, and from 2005 to 2017 he headed Belarus Hi-Tech Park which became the largest IT cluster in Central and Eastern Europe over that period. He also served as a governmental expert to the UN Secretary General in the field of information and communication technologies. Valery Tsepkalo has a Doctor degree in International Law, as well as a rank of Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary.

Valery Tsepkalo
Цепкало Валерий Вильямович
Born (1965-02-22) 22 February 1965
Grodno, Belarus
Alma materMoscow State Institute of International Relations
OccupationDiplomat

Biography

Valery Tsepkalo was born in Grodno on 22 February 1965 to a family of chemical engineers. He graduated from Grodno secondary school No.14 with advanced program in English. In 1982 he entered the Belarusian Technological Institute (currently the Belarusian State Technilogical University) in Minsk where he studied till 1984. In 1984—1986 he underwent compulsory military training in the USSR Strategic Missile Forces. After that, he studied at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and graduated with honors[3] in 1991. He pursued a postgraduate program there, graduated with honors as well, lectured, and got his PhD degree in International Law.


Diplomatic and political career

He started his diplomatic career in 1991 in the USSR Embassy in Finland. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union he decided to return to Minsk, and in 1992 he took a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus. In 1993—1994 he served as foreign policy adviser to the Chairman of the Parliament of Belarus. Later he became an adviser to the Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States.[4]

In 1993 Tsepkalo decided to pursue an independent political career. Together with Valery Skurlatov, in December 1993 he joined the governing body of the ‘Revival’ Liberal Patristic Party. The Party’s programme was to restore the USSR in its 1945 borders.[5]

During 1994 presidential campaign Tsepkalo left Stanislav Shushkevich’s team and joined Alexander Lukashenko, who was the youngest candidate then. Tsepkalo became one of the campaign managers. He arranged Lukashenko’s visit to Moscow State Duma and the influential LDPR Party to gain additional political weight. For associating with Lukashenko Tsepkalo was banned from diplomacy by Shushkevich’s successor Myechyslaw Hryb, who at the time held the post of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Later Shushkevich described Tsepkalo as an “extremely wily person <...> who always worked on the edge of good and bad”.[6][7][8]

After Lukashenko's victory, in 1994 he was appointed First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus. From 1997 to 2002 he served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the United States of America and the United Mexican States (concurrently).[9][7]

After finishing the diplomatic career, he was appointed Assistant to the President of Belarus (on science and technologies).[10]

High Technologies Park

The idea to establish the Belarusian Silicon Valley was first offered by the president Alexander Lukashenko in 2003 and was further developed in 2004 by Valery Tsepkalo and Mikhail Myasnikovich.[11]

Upon leaving the diplomatic career, from 2004 Tsepkalo engaged in the creation of the Belarusian Silicon Valley. As a result of the active lobby on September 22, 2005, the presidential order №12 ‘On Technology Park’ was released, securing benefits for IT-companies.[8] The extraterrestrial High Technologies Park (HTP) was launched in 2005 under Tsepkalo’s lead.[12]

On March 2, 2017, Tsepkalo was released by presidential decree from the director’s post at the HTP. Since 2005 the HTP rose to 237 companies with total annual export over $1 bln. However, market players noted the lack of product IT companies and the prevalence of outsource developers. Tsepkalo was also criticized for his counterproductive selectivity of the HTP residents. After his resignation, only in 2018 the Park accepted more than 200 new residents.[13][14][12]

Prabook

In 2018 Tsepkalo introduced his new project ‘Prabook.com’, a biographical database, designed to ensure ‘digital immortality’. It claimed to create personal profiles, accumulating images and texts from open sources, chosen by the developers. In fact, the profiles tend to disclose personal data from sealed sources and violate copyrights. For copying data from Wikipedia, Prabook was included in Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks list.[13][15] After the Prabook’s launch, it was revealed that Tsepkalo was employing the HTP personnel to work on his private project.[16]

Presidency Campaign

On May 8, 2020, Tsepkalo announced his candidacy for Belarus presidency.[17] Commenting on his former assistant’s running for president, Alexander Lukashenko claimed that Tsepkalo was dismissed as the HTP director for a reason which should reveal himself.[18]

According to the Belarusian political analyst Artyom Shraibman’s article for Carnegie Moscow Center, 2020 presidential elections will be special for” two prominent members of the establishment” — Valery Tsepkalo and Victor Babariko.[19] The Belarusian philosopher Vladimir Matskevich compared Tsepkalo’s running for president to 2006 Alyaksandr Kazulin’s campaign, launched only as a spoiler to the current government.[7] Shraibman mentions the similarities between their political programmes — both promise a comprehensive state modernization and economic liberalization, a president to be seen as a manager with a two-term limit, a ‘friendship with all’ foreign policy.[19]

Criticism

House

To finance the campaign he sold his 418.3 m² house on leaseback terms, actually never stopping to use it. The property has already been given media attention — first the land was exclusively rented for 231 roubles per year, the next developer turned out to be the former HTP contractor in 2012—2015, thus the conflict of interests was detected.[20][21]  In May 2020 the contractor, engaged in Tsepkalo’s private house construction, provided documents that he received no payment for all works in 2013—2014. Later Tsepkalo used his HTP presidency to force the contractor into a conciliation agreement and waiving all claims under threat of withdrawal of all general contracts on the HTP. Previously Tsepkalo and his Press Secretary Alexey Urban claimed that the contractor had been working only for 3 weeks.[21][22]

Media Pressure

As the director of the HTP, Tsepkalo used his position to influence on Belarusian media and threatened to expel resident companies from the HTP for collaboration with dev.by. Several times he promised ‘certain troubles’ to Yuri Zisser and TUT.by authors.[23][16]

In 2020, soon after his candidacy announcement, Tsepkalo was interviewed by Dev.by. Later he called back his words and sent a cut and edited version, adding the written prohibition to publish the original interview.[16]

In the end of May the media drew attention to the attempts of editing Tsepkalo’s personal page on Russian Wikipedia, cutting off the data on his Prabook project, pressure on the media, sale of his house, and reducing the number of citations on affiliation to Lukashenko.[24]

Chagall Vodka

In 2006 the WIPO entertained a suit for an illegal exploitation of Marc Chagall’s name by Valery Tsepkalo’s company Dotster, Inc. that owned vodkachagall.com domain. An association from France represented Chagal’s heirs, who sued Dodster for exploitation of the artist’s name in advertisement of ‘Chagall Vodka’. The Court ordered Tsepkalo to transfer the domain name to the claimants.[25]

Research and publications
  • 80 articles on religion, world economy, and foreign policy.[26]
  • 20 articles on e-government, information technology, and intellectual property.[26]
  • Publications in Foreign Affairs, Journal of Congress, Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and Horizons.[27]
  • By the Road of Dragon States book on economic development of new industrialized nations of South-East Asia.
  • Man Everlasting book on the mystery of death and resurrection.
  • Hi-Tech Park: 10 Years of Development book on Belarus HTP success story.
  • Author of patented method of people search based on collateral features.[28]

Other occupations
  • Member of the Strategic Council of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development.[29]
  • Government expert to the UN Secretary General in the field of information and communication technologies in the context of information security.[30]
  • In 2018 he took part in the development of the Mirzo Ulugbek Innovation Center (ICSU) in Uzbekistan.[31]

Personal life

Married to Veronika Tsepkalo. Veronika is from Mogilev, graduated from BSU faculty of international relations, then studied at the Higher school of management and business of BSEU. Then she studied business management in India, has worked for a major international Corporation for the past 10 years. The couple has two children.[32][33]

References
  1. "Глава Администрации президента рассказывает о "Силиконовой долине" в режиме online". TUT.BY (in Russian). 2004-07-07. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  2. "Создатель Парка высоких технологий Валерий Цепкало отметил юбилей". SB.BY (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  3. "Diploma of Valery Tsepkalo".
  4. Background (in Russian)
  5. Политический экстремизм в России. - Москва, 1996. - с. 173
  6. "«Хитрый человек», бывший посол в США, создатель ПВТ… Кто такой Валерий Цепкало" (in Russian). ex-press.by. 2020-05-09.
  7. "Вы знали, что Цепкало вёл Лукашенко на выборы-94? А что ПВТ обзванивают против него? Вот полная история – раз уж все спорят о нём". kyky.org. 2020-05-14.
  8. "Валерий Цепкало больше не директор ПВТ (обновлено)" (in Russian). dev.by. 2017-03-02. Retrieved 2018-11-27.
  9. "О назначении Валерия Цепкало директором администрации Парка высоких технологий". Retrieved 2018-11-27.
  10. Valery Tsepkalo
  11. Hi-Tech Park - from idea to realization
  12. "Пять главных достижений Цепкало на посту главы ПВТ". dev.by (in Russian). 2017-03-03.
  13. "Создал ПВТ, помог Лукашенко, написал книгу о бессмертии. Кто такой Валерий Цепкало?" (in Russian). Bel.biz. 2020-05-12.
  14. "Беларусь: IT-чудо или небольшой региональный игрок с сотыми долями процента рынка". Retrieved 2018-11-27.
  15. "Валерий Цепкало, экс-глава ПВТ, представил свой стартап Prabook — всемирную биографическую библиотеку" (in Russian). Bel.biz. 2018-11-23.
  16. "Цепкало продал дом, чтобы баллотироваться. И запретил dev.by публиковать полную версию интервью" (in Russian). Dev.by. 2020-05-12.
  17. "Многоходовка или пиар? Зачем бывший глава ПВТ Цепкало бросил вызов Лукашенко" (in Russian). БелаПАН. 2020-05-12.
  18. "Лукашенко про Цепкало: Пусть скажет, почему я его уволил. И ему не захочется идти на выборы" (in Russian). Наша Нiва. 2020-05-29.
  19. Артём Шрайбман (2020-05-27). "Выборы перед новой эрой. Почему выходцы из элиты бросили вызов Лукашенко" (in Russian). Московский центр Карнеги.
  20. "Валерий Цепкало - Кандидат на пост президенда Республики Беларусь". tsepkalo2020.by. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  21. "Цепкало действительно продал дом. Сделка купли-продажи прошла в марте" (in Russian). Dev.by. 2020-05-12.
  22. "Застройщик: «Цепкало за дом не заплатил». Выслушали все стороны" (in Russian). Dev.by. 2020-05-29.
  23. "«Всё враньё». Что не так с ответом Цепкало на вопрос dev.by" (in Russian). Dev.by. 2020-05-21.
  24. "Как со страницы Валерия Цепкало в «Википедии» пытаются удалить провокационную информацию" [Attempts to Remove Controversial Data from Ru-Wiki Valry Tsepkalo page] (in Russian). Village Belarus. 2020-05-29.
  25. "Association pour la Defense et la Promotion de l'oeuvre de Marc Chagall Dite "Comite Marc Chagall" v. Valery Tsepkalo".  WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. 2006-07-11. no-break space character in |publisher= at position 1 (help)
  26. "Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security" (PDF).
  27. "The Remaking of Eurasia". Retrieved 2018-11-27.
  28. "United States Patent Application: 0190102470". appft.uspto.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-26.
  29. "Belarus Hi Tech Park - - Director of Belarus HTP Elected as Member of Strategy Council of UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development". www.park.by. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  30. "Biographies of UNIDO panelists" (PDF). www.unido.org. Retrieved 2018-12-14.
  31. "Основатель белорусского ПВТ Валерий Цепкало прибыл в Ташкент". infocom.uz (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  32. REFORM.by (2020-05-21). "Фотофакт: жена Валерия Цепкало пришла на пресс-конференцию" (in Russian). REFORM.by. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  33. "«Выходить с женой в свет — нормально. Люди хотят видеть, кто рядом с президентом». Интервью с Вероникой Цепкало" (in Russian). TUT.by. 2020-05-28.
  • Tsepkalo — Valery Tsepkalo at Livejournal.
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