You're reading: Rabynovych links murder attempt to authorities wanting his JN1 TV channel

Well-known Ukrainian businessman, co-chairman of the European Jewish Parliament (EJP) and president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress Vadym Rabynovych has said he does not rule out that an explosive was thrown at his car due to his reluctance to give away the Jewish News One (JN1) television channel to representatives of the current authorities. 

Rabynovych says somebody wanted to intimidate him due to his reluctance to give away JN1 TV channel 

He said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday that some time ago Party of Regions MP Andriy Derkach visited him and demanded that he give away the JN1 channel, otherwise the businessman would face “big problems.”

He said he had written a letter to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka and informed him about that conversation.

“I have a question: if I write to the leadership of the law enforcement system in Ukraine that a certain person at the highest level in our country is engaged in racketeering, there must be at least some response. If there was no response, then I have questions that someone is covering him. Then Andriy Derkach is really right, he came to me not at his own desire, this means that somebody sent him. If there is now no response to what I say, then, he was sent by the people to whom it’s unnecessary to react,” Rabynovych said.

The businessman said he was confident that this had been an attempt to intimidate, rather than kill him.

“Yesterday I talked informally with the police, and they said that it was an explosive device, with a very serious, military-type fuse. But there was no shrapnel. If there had been, there would probably have been a different result,” he said.

“I won’t rewrite any channel to anyone. I will start the second registration of the channel in Belgium, where it was registered, just in case. Today [on March 6] I will fly to Belgium, stay there for a couple of days and hold a press conference there,” Rabynovych said.

As reported, a bomb exploded in the afternoon on March 4 in the center of Kyiv near Rabynovych’s office at 14 Mechnykova Street, next to a parked car. The former editor of the Stolichniye Novosti newspaper, Volodymyr Katsman, said that it was an attempt on Rabynovych’s life, and that the bomb had been thrown at the car as Rabynovych was leaving the courtyard. The explosion caused no injuries, but the Lexus 570 sustained minor mechanical damage.

On March 5, Kyiv police started criminal proceedings on charges of hooliganism in connection with the blast that occurred near Rabynovych’s office.

Rabynovych said he did not rule out that the blast was a sign of the current government’s discontent with the Jewish News One (JN1) television channel he runs.