Ruslan Mihalevschi, the member of the Broadcasting Council (BC) requested during the BC meeting held on November 4 to initiate a checkup regarding the change of the final beneficiary of the Telesistem TV Company which owns Primul in Moldova and Accent TV channels. In his opinion, the change had taken place without informing the broadcasting authority in advance. Diamond Estate, a company from Moscow which became the new beneficiary of the two channels, was previously headed by Andrei Goncharenko, the concessionaire of Chisinau International Airport.
The author of the application referred to the information published in the press, but mentioned that he had verified these facts personally. “According to the data from the State Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Moldova, Telesistem TV SRL still has OO Media Invest Service, a company from the Russian Federation, as its founder. At the same time, the excerpts from the State Register of Legal Entities of the Russian Federation demonstrate that, on October 7 this year, the sole associate of the Media Invest Service Company was changed. Instead of OO Obyedniennye Resursy, Diamond Estate from Moscow became its founder. Alexei Polunin, a Russian citizen, is the sole founder of this company,” Ruslan Mihalevschi said.
He informed his colleagues and the audience that previously, the founder of the Diamond Estate Company was Andrei Goncharenko, a Russian citizen. “According to the press publications, in 2019-2020, this businessman from the Russian Federation was the final beneficiary of the company which obtained a concession of Chisinau International Airport. Besides, according to these publications, he also had commercial interests in the Air Moldova Company,” Ruslan Mihalevschi informed.
In his application to the Council, he addressed the Media Service Control Department demanding to check whether Telesistem TV had complied with Art. 25, para. 5 of the Code of Audiovisual Media Services, according to which media service providers shall file a written request to the Broadcasting Council in case of any amendments to their documents and identification data of their shareholders and associates, up to the level of natural or legal persons. In addition, according to the licensing provisions, the license holder shall inform the BC about the amendments to their legal status and the composition of the founders, as well as the identification data of the broadcasting license holder, within 30 days.
Last week, Media Azi wrote about the fact that Media Invest Service, a Russian company which is the founder of Telesistem TV, a Moldovan company, had replaced not only its administrator, but also its Russian owners. The portal referred to the information published by Ziarul de Garda, which had consulted the data from the Register of Legal Entities of the Russian Federation.
The BC notified the three state authorities after being informed on September 22 by Telesistem TV Company, the owner of Accent TV and Primul in Moldova channels, that the company had a new administrator, and a number of media institutions had written that the two TV channels were supposedly controlled by the Sor Party.