This is true. And I would agree that his name is now tarnished forever, or at least as long as people remember what he did.
Not so sure, we have already some species named after people who have been convicted of smuggling orchids, Paphiopedilum henryanum ( Henry Azadehdel), Phragmipedium popowii, blabla ariasii, etc...
In a way, people though in their times that Azadehdel or Kovach are bad. For Azadehdel, the problem has been solved years ago. He sold expensive plants, 'selected' for many of them really, and 'many' according to the ignorant people of that time.
After a while, we realized that Hsu She Hua, from Kowloon, had exported some dozen thousands micranthum, dozen thousands armeniacum, dozen thousands malipoense, countless pleione, cypripedium, paphiopedilum barbigerum... at the same time, where Azadehdel would have smuggled maybe 200-500 armeniacum, Hsu She Hua, and a handful of other nurseries from Taiwan ( including in those days Taida Orchids...) would smuggle at the very same time dozen of thousands of plants.
In the 90's we realized too that Azadehdel was right, he did not collect rothschildianum and sanderianum in any natural preserve. We realized too that, no matter what he did, it was nothing compared to the megawaves of overcollection boosted by the Taiwanese, the Japanese, the Dutches ( pot plant), the Chinese more recently.
Thinking well, Kovach smuggled a few plants, Arias a few hundreds plants, Portilla a few hundreds plants too. Which one is the worst offender
In common, Azadehdel and Kovach names are known by most people in the orchid world. I know a dozen different names that are involved in the same trade at a much larger, industrial scale level, and that no one on this forum knows. In this respect, Kovach was just nuts, and a small guy, but nothing to make all that noise around.
Indeed, there has been no paphiopedilum described recently that was from a really 'clean' origin, none... but we still consider the botanists who described the plants and the owner of the original plants as good guys, where they are not better or worse than Kovach indeed... They had to act the same too, use illegally collected material to describe the plant, all of them, and no exception...Paphiopedilum ooii as an example come from a national park, was smuggled from Sabah to Peninsular Malaysia, and the fresh wild plant used to describe it and name it after the collector's customer. The holotype used to describe it has been smuggled too to... Kew... Where is the difference with kovachii ? there is absolutely none.