You're reading: CEOs fight for control of TVi channel

TVi channel, whose critical news reporting and investigative journalism stands in sharp contrast to the pro-government line taken by most TV stations in Ukraine, is immersed in a nasty internal fight over control.

On April 23,
the press service of the TVi channel announced a change in owner and CEO.
Instead of Russian businessman Kostyantyn Kagalovskiy, the station said a little-known
New York-based Ukrainian-born Alexander Altman is the new investor. The
statement also names TVI’s Artem Shevchenko, an anchorman of Znak Oklyku
investigative program, as the channel’s new CEO.

Shortly
afterwards, Nataliya Katerynchuk, the channel’s CEO before today, said
guards hadn’t allowed her and Kagalovskiy inside the channel’s office. She
called the police and reported a raider attack.

“The
strategy (of new investors) is simple: now to gain control over the company and
then to sell it to someone who will close the channel or will make a music
channel of it,” said Kagalovskiy during an emergency press conference that he
and Katerynchuk held on April 23. However, he said that he thinks the problem might
be solved in 24 hours. “I don’t think that someone from the serious people in
power stands behind such kind of petty crooks,” Kagalovskiy said.

Kagalovskiy
said he is the sole owner of the channel, adding that during the last year
there have been no negotiations about TVi’s possible sale. “I didn’t plan to
sell the channel and I’m not planning it now.”

Shevchenko, in turn, downplayed the
significance of changes in the channel’s ownership structure. As he explained to
LB.ua web-site, Altman is just a new investor of TVi. “There was no raider
attack,” he emphasized.

Nothing will change in the station’s
independent editorial policy, Shevchenko believes. However, he didn’t allow
Katerynchuk on air during one of the evening news programs to explain the
position of the former management. TVi journalists announced a strike until the
problem is resolved.

As the result of the standoff inside the TVi
newsroom, the channel’s main news program at 7:30 p.m. was cancelled. Instead,
a rerun of Monday’s program was shown.

Legally,
the owner of TVi is Teleradiosvit company. According to Kagalovskiy, 100
percent of its statutory capital belongs to Media Info, a Kyiv-based limited
liability company. At the same time, its sole shareholder is Willcox Ventures Ltd
from the British Virgin Islands, whose final beneficiary was Kagalovskiy. He
suggested that Alexander Altman forged the power of attorney and got control
over the company. But the Russian businessman had seen no new documents, he
added.

Altman was
born in Odesa in 1956. He moved in 1990 to New York, where he founded Advanced
Materials, currently listed as “inactive.” According to TVi’s ex-director
Mykola Knyazhytsky, Altman was also an adviser to Yuriy Prodan during his
tenure as energy minister in 2007-2010.

Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Kapliuk can be
reached at [email protected].