The National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting has claimed there were a number of violations during the competition for additional television frequencies held on January 27, 2010, according to a council statement posted on its Web site on Wednesday.
In particular, among the violations the council pointed to the absence of a quorum of members of the National Council: "Article 24 of the law of Ukraine on the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting stipulates that a meeting is recognized lawful if at least six members of the national council are present. In this case five out of eight members were present. This means there was no quorum."
The Prosecutor’s General Office, in turn, on January 29 issued a warrant on this violation, but it wasn’t fulfilled or appealed against by the national council.
The statement reads that the TVi Channel, in violation of the procedure, received additional television frequencies, which it won in the competition of January 27, to increase the capacity of transmitters. But the national council failed to take a decision on increasing the capacity and assigning additional frequencies, as foreseen by the law.
None of the registers that were to include information on assigning additional frequencies to TV companies of Ukraine were updated with information that the TVi Channel and the Fifth TV Channel had obtained additional broadcasting frequencies. In addition, the registers didn’t include the signatures of authorized persons.
According to this evidence and the results of an internal official investigation, the national council claimed its legal position was that: "The competition was held non-transparently with gross violations of current legislation."
