You're reading: TVi, LB.ua targets of investigations

Two criminal cases opened against large media outlets – TVi channel and LB.ua website – have stirred an outcry among journalists and experts who say the investigations are attacks on free press ahead of the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections.

On July 19, about 100 journalists and activists protested in front of the General Prosecutor’s Office in Kyiv, demanding the cases be dropped and that the government stop pressure on independent media.

President Viktor Yanukovych issued a statement on July 19, saying he is “concerned with the opening of criminal cases” against both media outlets. The president asked General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka and State Tax Service Head Oleksandr Klymenko to review the legal grounds of the cases.
Other officials were not eager to talk.

Initially, they told protesters about a bomb threat to a nearby building and ordered them not to come closer. Later, two local court officers arrived and read aloud a two-week old ruling of the court that banned any mass gatherings in the downtown area, including outside the General Prosecutor’s Office, till the end of August.

Journalists reacted to both warnings with derisive laughs.

“Those in power have to understand the absurdity of their actions, when it is obvious that opening criminal cases on those few independent media ahead of the elections is pure political persecution,” said Artem Shevchenko, a journalist and anchorman at TVi.

The criminal case against Mykola Kniazhytsky, head of the TVi channel, was opened following inspections in April. In June, the tax service head Klymenko declared a moratorium on all tax checks on media outlets ahead of the fall elections.

“A criminal case was opened against Kniazhytsky for the deliberate evasion of paying Hr 3.025 million in taxes,” said Mykola Kovtunenko, spokesperson for the State Tax Service’s office in Kyiv.

According to Kovtunenko, tax inspections found violations of tax laws that led to undervalued value-added tax obligations. The State Tax Service received a ruling of the court, allowing them to seize documents from the office of TVi, which they did on July 12.

TVi is an independent channel that has produced some of the nation’s best and most critical investigative journalism. It has been under attack since at least 2010, when the channel was stripped of several of its frequencies.

“This tax credit appeared when we were buying equipment. Then the government had to pay back the VAT tax, which they did only partly. Now, they say that it is not theirs, but our debt,” Kniazhytsky said, explaining why he thinks the charges are absurd.

Jurimex, a law firm that represents TVi, claims the company received a ruling of the district administrative court on June 25 that dismissed back-tax claims against the channel.

While the authorities have been squeezing TVi for years, a criminal investigation into online news outlet LB.ua came as something of a surprise.

In late June, LB.ua chief editor Sonya Koshkina said she heard that the organization was being investigated for a story that ran on the website eight months earlier.

In November 2011, the website’s photographer took a picture of Volodymyr Landik, a member of parliament from the pro-presidential Party of Regions. The photo shows Landik texting somebody in parliament and asking for help with his son, Roman, who was then on trial for assaulting a woman in Luhansk.

LB.ua published pictures of text messages where Landik apparently asks somebody for “back up” and positive coverage of the trial in the media.  Landik immediately wrote to prosecutors, blaming LB.ua for invasion of privacy.

Why the prosecutor suddenly took interest in Landik’s complaint eight months later is suspicious to many people. Even Landik said that he has since patched things up with Koshkina and decided to not pursue the case. Despite this, the prosecutor confirmed the case is open on July 18, after denying it only days earlier.

“Landik is being used as a tool to bring down the web page and me personally,” said Koshkina, who is now in Europe and fears coming back to Ukraine.

Media in Ukraine are “partly free” and freedoms are declining, according to the 2012 Freedom House report. According to the report, the country suffered the deepest rollback in democracy of any major country during the past two years.

The nation now has the same score as it did in 2004, during President Leonid Kuchma’s authoritarian regime.

“These criminal cases and persecution are a clear-cut message to the regions, where screws on local media are very tight. The message reads – if we in Kyiv can do it, you guys can do whatever you want,” says Mykhailo Volynets, an opposition member of parliament from the Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko who was present at the protest.

So far the top authorities are not willing to talk. No prosecutors spoke to journalists on July 19. “We were told that Viktor Pshonka is on vacation and his first deputy, Renat Kuzmin, went to the presidential administration,” said head of the Media Front Trade Union of Journalists Natalia Sokolenko.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]