On September 22, a Kyiv court will hear an appeal against the Goloseevsky Court's decision regarding the illegal seizure of the TVi television channel.
Let me remind you that in late April 2013, corporate raiders seized the television channel at the behest of President Yanukovych's family, as part of a purge of Ukraine's media landscape. The details of the seizure, its instigators and perpetrators, their methods, and other details are gradually becoming publicly known. And all this information is being formalized into court cases.
The robbed owner of the TVi channel, Konstantin Kagalovsky, is confident that the raiders acted on orders from Deputy Prime Minister Arbuzov and the oligarch Klyuev; the person who carried out the seizure was a deputy from Batkivshchyna, the former director of the channel, Nikolai Knyazhitsky (Read more about it in the article Nikolai Knyazhitsky: the TV swindler), and the operation was financed by another deputy, David Zhvania.
We, the channel's journalists, were perfectly clear about the nature of this sordid story back in May 2013, so almost the entire creative team resigned in protest. The truth was revealed to the Ukrainian courts only after the Maidan.
We have described the history of the capture of TVi in detail.
We followed the trial in London.
An English court sentenced businessman Altman to 1,5 years in prison. His name was used as a cover for the raiders, and the seized channel was registered to his companies.
Nobody expected justice from Ukrainian judges.
However, on July 21, Kyiv's Holosiivskyi Court unexpectedly sided with the plaintiff in the case of the British company Wilcox Ventures against Media Info and Balmore Invest and the channel's former deputy director, Oleg Radchenko, who had fraudulently acquired TVi through manipulation and deception. This decision would have been a sensation if not for the war in Donbas.
This wasn't the first trial. Before the Maidan, all courts sided with the raiders and rejected Konstantin Kagalovsky's British company. But no one expected the Maidan to happen.
While Maidan didn't change Ukraine's judicial system, it did cool the corrupt fervor of Ukrainian judges somewhat. A Kyiv court ordered the company returned to its former owner. Why this sudden change?
In May, English lawyers wrote a lengthy, detailed letter to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk requesting an investigation not only into the takeover of TVi, but also into the companies involved or through which the channel was financed after the takeover.
British lawyers requested an investigation, for example, into how Energoatom's money was used in the takeover of the television channel. They also requested clarification of businessman David Zhvania's role in this murky affair.
Yatsenyuk's letter went unanswered. Not surprisingly, Arseniy Yatsenyuk didn't bother with his former Front of Change party comrade, Mykola Martynenko, and his partner, David Zhvania, who are linked to Energoatom.
As a reminder, following the corporate takeover of the TVi television channel, former Party of Regions member David Zhvania seized control of it. This was reported in a journalistic investigation by Denis Bigus.
The fact that the channel is now under Zhvania's control was confirmed to the journalist by another figure in the seizure scandal, Batkivshchyna MP Mykola Kniazhitsky.
"I don't dispute that Zhvania is currently running this channel; it's a fact," Knyazhitsky said, adding that Zhvania appeared "at some early stages."
The journalist found additional confirmation of this in correspondence posted online, allegedly between Knyazhitsky, Zhvania, and the "new owner" of TVi, Alexander Altman.
These files contain letters indicating that Altman may have been involved in a corporate raiding scheme, creating conditions for his companies to win tenders from the state-owned Energoatom.
Two companies directly linked to Altman—Atom-Energo-Proekt and Unix Cz sro—are engaged in consulting in the nuclear energy market, where Zhvania and Knyazhitsky's close associate, Nikolai Martynenko, are known to be extremely influential.
According to the correspondence, Altman allegedly forwarded tender plans for these firms to Knyazhitsky, who then forwarded them to Zhvania.
As the journalist discovered, Altman used state budget funds received by his firms in tenders to hire lawyers for London courts on TVi.
After a London court sentenced Altman to one and a half years in prison, companies associated with him stopped winning tenders.
After the Maidan, Zhvania's funding became a major burden. Behind the scenes, he openly told journalists he was ready to give it up. Even those who had been recruited immediately after the takeover left the channel.
But on the eve of the presidential elections, Zhvania decided to keep TVi afloat for a while longer, especially when it became clear that parliamentary elections were inevitable.
It's clear why Zhvania's TV channel is needed. But why do Yatsenyuk and President Poroshenko need this murky story?
British lawyers, having received no response from the Ukrainian Prime Minister, sent letters to President Poroshenko through the Ukrainian embassies in London and the British embassy in Kyiv.
English lawyers have asked President Poroshenko to look into the TVi case and ensure that this flagrant case of corruption in Ukraine is finally investigated and the perpetrators punished.
The letter was sent to the president on July 24, after the Goloseevsky court's decision, so the judge made the unexpected decision on the TVi case without pressure from the presidential administration.
What decision should we expect now? The fact is that David Zhvania is running on the Petro Poroshenko Bloc party list. True, he will be running in a single-member constituency in the Odesa region, but this has nevertheless sparked discontent among those who believe genuine change is needed in the country, not a sham change of scenery.
In response to criticism regarding Zhvania, the party leadership hints at some unclear relationship between the businessman-turned-MP and the president. Most likely, Zhvania's inclusion on the list is a manifestation of the traditional nepotism and behind-the-scenes bargaining that plagues Ukraine.
Mykola Knyazhitsky is also clinging to power; he is running on the list of Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front.
Knyazhitsky left TVi back in the fall. He decided that creating his own channel would be safer and is trying his best to distance himself from the TVi raid and his friendship with the convicted Altman.
It will be interesting to see what decision the court makes in the case involving two deputies, one of whom is from the presidential bloc.
Those involved say Zhvania appears intent on jettisoning the channel, but will try to hold out until the parliamentary elections. Especially since the channel's terrestrial license expires at the end of the year, and TVi's value will plummet if the rights to those frequencies aren't renewed. In fact, in a couple more months, no one will need TVi at all.
Of course, during a war, there are more pressing issues for the state, the president, and ordinary people than protecting the rights of foreign investors. Recently, the flagship of Ukraine's aircraft manufacturing industry was nearly raided, a military hospital belongs to a Russian bank, so why worry about a dying television channel? But the point is the principle.
TVi—a decent project that, during the difficult times of Yanukovych's rule, allowed the opposition to at least somehow reach Ukrainians—fell victim to the greed and meanness of a small group of people who learned to exploit Ukraine's thoroughly rotten and corrupt judicial and law enforcement systems.
And if justice doesn't prevail in this matter, then nothing has changed in Ukraine, and the entire country can be slowly torn apart, hiding behind fine words about the European choice.
Pavel Sheremet, TV presenter, Ukrainian Truth
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