You're reading: Media: TVi Channel’s accounts released

The TVi Channel has received permission to continue its foreign-economic activities, the channel's director general, Mykola Kniazhytsky, told Channel 5.

“According to him, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry cancelled its sanctions,” the TV channel said.

As reported, earlier Kniazhytsky said that the channel’s foreign currency accounts were frozen.

“All of our foreign currency accounts have been arrested under a letter from the Economy Ministry, which is absurd and has no legal grounds,” he told the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper on September 12.

Kniazhytsky also said that the arrest had already been appealed against at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.

At the same time, he said that the channel had lost in court an appeal lodged by the State Tax Service regarding the reimbursement of Hr 9 million in tax debts. The channel won the case in a lower court.

On July 12, 2012, reports said that a criminal case had been opened against TVi Director Kniazhytsky. The tax police accused him of failing to pay Hr 3 million in taxes to the budget. Kniazhytsky said that he had already won all of the trials on this case and that he had paid all taxes. The tax police started checking the channel’s documents, although Head of the State Tax Service Oleksandr Klymenko signed an order in April 2012 declaring a moratorium on media checks before parliamentary elections.

On July 27 the prosecutor’s office cancelled an instruction on the opening of the criminal case against Kniazhytsky. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Pshonka ordered to check whether the criminal case was opened legally.

Kniazhytsky is eleventh in the party ticket of the united opposition.

In addition, on July 20, 2012, TVi Channel said that it had been disconnected from the cable networks of the Triolan trademark and that residents of 11 towns in Ukraine had been deprived of a chance to watch the channel. TVi linked this “with the pressure being placed on the channel.”

The National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council refused to intervene in the settlement of the conflict, saying that the conflict between TVi and Triolan was commercial.