Sapieha-Beckmann
Medicover, a private, international medical care organization, opened its first clinic in Warsaw in 1995. It has since expanded to Lodz, Katowice, Krakow, Gdansk, Poznan, Wroclaw and Szczecin. With a patient base of more than 50,000 Poles, Medicover's revenue surged to zl. 37 million ($8 million) last year from zl. 10 million ($2.2 million) in 1997. The company's major stockholder is Oresa Ventures, which is listed on the Swedish stock exchange.
Medicover was the brainchild of the Polish-born Bengt Beckmann, who died last year. In 1981 he married Maria Gabriela Sapieha, a descendant of Lithuanian aristocrats whose family had settled in Kenya after World War II. In 1984 Beckmann established the Africa Air Rescue Health Services (AAR), a medical organization that initially acted as an emergency service but later developed into a healthcare company. Today, the company serves 70,000 patients in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In 1990 Beckmann visited Poland for the first time, and after his wife regained her Polish citizenship, decided to set up a medical company here. The Business Journal's Anna Kocinska talked to Maria Sapieha-Beckmann about her Polish roots and the company her husband started. The following is a translated, edited version of their conversation.
Q: Where does your family come from?
A: Today it's in Belarus, but before the war it was part of Poland. Our properties were situated on the other side of the Niemen River, as my father always said, in Spusza (40 kilometers from Grodno).
Q: What happened to your family during and after the war?
A: The war scattered them throughout all the continents. My grandfather, Eustachy Kajetan Sapieha, who was a foreign affairs minister in Poland's pre-war government in 1920, became a Soviet prisoner in 1939. He was imprisoned in Lubianka (a Moscow prison where many Poles died). At first he was sentenced to death but somehow he wasn't executed (and instead received) 15 years of hard labor in Siberia. In 1941, my grandfather, like many Polish prisoners of Soviet labor camps, was able to leave Russia thanks to the Polish-Russian agreement. (Under the agreement signed by Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Polish prime minister in England, Poles deported to Russia could be released and some of them joined the Polish army being created under General Wladyslaw Anders.) After being appointed president of the Polish Red Cross, he went to Kenya where he was responsible for Polish refugees in eastern Africa. There were about 40,000 Poles in Kenya at the time. He stayed in Kenya since my family lost everything during the war and the British wouldn't let in poor whites.
Q: Where was your father at that time?
A: He was a German prisoner. But my mother participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Eventually, they joined my grandfather in Kenya. My two sisters and myself were born in Kenya. We attended English schools but Polish was our main language at home. We were raised in a Polish spirit. I visited Poland for the first time only in 1969.
Q: How did you meet your husband?
A: My future husband worked for ITT, a large company based in Brussels, which used to send him to eastern Africa. At the time his first marriage had fallen apart and he was alone. He came to Kenya, where we met. I married a Swede who was accidentally born in Poland. His father was Swedish by origin but for generations his family had been living in Estonia. When the war broke out, as non-Estonians they were expelled from Estonia by the Germans. They came to Poland and only after the war did they go back to Sweden.
Q: How did your grandfather cope with living in Kenya?
A: Life wasn't easy, but so many people were in the same situation. And my father and my mother, a young couple, came to Kenya and started working. They were able to live thanks to their hard work.
Q: Did they ever think that it would be possible to return to Poland?
A: This thought never left my father. Obviously, they knew it wouldn't happen so quickly. At that time, Poland was deeply entangled in the communist system and the land where my family used to live became part of the Soviet Union. The communists wouldn't allow people like my grandfather to live there. The Polish intelligentsia also had a difficult life at the time. I remember that in 1989 my parents said they had never thought they would live to see the moment when Poland would become free again.
Q: Why did you come to Poland during communism?
A: I came to see my family. The first time I came to Poland in 1969, I visited my mother's sisters, who lived in Wroclaw. As you know, after the war many people from Kresy (the eastern part of pre-war Poland, which today is distributed among Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania) settled in Wroclaw. After my first time in Poland I would come here almost every summer.
Q: Would you like to visit Belarus?
A: I've never been there but it's already been arranged that I will go next year. My father went to Spusza after 67 years and found nothing there. Why should I go? It's the kind of emotion that might simply be inscribed in my blood. My sister went there two years ago and said that now she understands that something from that land must be in our genes.
Q: Do you feel that restitution laws are a must for Poland?
A: That's a very difficult question. Over 60 years have passed and the old generations (of families like ours) have died out. Do I have the right to demand the return of land where three generations might have been living already? No. If we're talking about a building that was stolen by the government, then maybe I would say yes. But in the case of land, do we have the right to take it away? Am I in a position to demand something back that my family owned 60 years ago? I also bought some land in Poland. In the same way, people who buy land today don't know who owned it earlier.
Q: But do you think that we can build a new state without respecting ownership rights?
A: Yes and no. I live in Africa and I own land, which belonged to somebody else 50 years ago. I bought this land from colonists. So, can blacks take it away? Look at what's going on in Zimbabwe. Three or four generations of whites are being expelled from their farms because the government promised that land to blacks. So, I'm sorry I can't answer that question.
Q: How much did your family lose?
A: Forty thousand hectares of forest. In communist Poland, they wanted my family to sign documents and they promised us compensation, you know, a few pennies. My family didn't sign them and never renounced their property.
Q: When did you decide that it was time to do something in Poland?
A: In 1993. My husband decided that he wanted to expand the business he had started in Kenya. It developed so well that he thought he could try it in Poland since my family was from here. At first he thought the business would go better in the Czech Republic or Hungary, but then it turned out that the Polish market was far more advanced. Its volume mattered, too, I guess. Another reason why the business in Poland developed so well was that my husband had a whole package (of know-how gained in Kenya) to be exported here. He had it all at his fingertips. He was a marketing man and acted that way. He let the market push that business forward and develop it. It worked in Kenya because the market needed it. Poland needed it too and that's why it's developing now. Naturally, it wasn't a pair of shoes or lipstick that he was selling. Healthcare involved him emotionally.
Q: How did you start up Medicover in Poland?
A: It all started with the help of Bogdan Komornicki. He was born in Poland, raised under communism and at the time the communist way of thinking was prominent. So, thank God we had him and his energy and experience, which carried the company through the first few years. The company was registered in my name at first since I had a Polish passport. It was easier that way. Today it's an international company. Then Agnieszka Szpara, today the CEO of Medicover Poland, started working with us. And my cousin, Piotr Sapieha, also joined the team. Our philosophy was that first we need to have people, to be organized and then when the company starts generating money, we could start investing. Our competitors, meanwhile, often acted a little bit like U.S. investors: 'Let's put a lot of money in something and see what comes out of it.'
Q: Where did you find people when healthcare was practically all state run in those days?
A: Generally speaking, 96% of our patients need a general practitioner and not a specialist. Most people catch a cold or the flu and don't need specialists. An overabundance of specialists has been a problem the world over for 30 years. My husband's idea was to employ young doctors who deal with simple problems. If they can't cope with something, only then do they direct a patient to a specialist. And preventive healthcare, vaccines, leaflets, etc., rather than treatment, is also important.
Q: Did it take long to implement this know-how and develop the company?
A: First, we needed to find our way through Polish legislation. I remember that when my husband introduced a red ambulance he was told that this was forbidden and that it should have been painted blue. Bogdan (Komornicki) learned that there was no such law and the only reason they said so was that for 40 years ambulances had been painted blue. Bengt (Maria's late husband) would say that laws exist to help people and if they make their lives difficult instead they should be changed.
Q: Was Medicover well received during its first years of existence in Poland?
A: People were ready for changes because they knew everything was falling apart. Bengt used to say that if we did good things for this country, there would be no objections. I am sure that such a company entering the market must have influenced all that is going on under the healthcare reform scheme. Besides, I think that privatization is always good and an effective way of limiting corruption.
Q: Why is Oresa Ventures a major stockholder in Medicover?
A: Oresa Ventures, owned by my husband's friend Jonas Jochnik, in a way originates from Oriflame Eastern Europe, a cosmetics company. In 1990, my father, Bengt and Jonas were on a safari. When they started talking about Poland my father and my husband encouraged Jonas to invest here. In May 1990, they came to Poland and Jonas saw a woman wearing lipstick while herding cows near Lublin. The market is there, he said. So he stayed for another six weeks and that's how it all started. Later Jochnik established Oresa Ventures and my husband talked him into investing in Medicover.
