#6033
[Second Issue of the Day]
#2
Court bailiffs move to shut Russian TV station
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Court bailiffs ordered Russia's Media Ministry on Monday to revoke the broadcast licence of the only nationwide television station outside Kremlin control and take it off the air.
The TV6 station, which had only last week said it would voluntarily give up the licence so that its journalists could form a new company to keep broadcasting, said it now wanted to keep it and would appeal against the bailiffs' order.
The two moves revived a battle over the station's fate, which has already raised questions at home and abroad about President Vladimir Putin's tolerance of dissent and the independence of the courts.
The Kremlin says it is purely a business dispute. But the station's backers -- and the United States -- suspect politics played a role in court decisions shutting the station down.
TV6's journalists and management came from NTV, another national channel which was taken over by the Kremlin-controlled natural gas monopoly last year in a boardroom coup, amid on-air strikes and street demonstrations.
Media Minister Mikhail Lesin said bailiffs had ordered his ministry to "halt the broadcasting and stop the activity of TV6 as a media outlet."
That, and the station's decision to fight to keep the licence, "strongly complicate the situation around TV6," he said after meeting the station's deputy director, Pavel Korchagin.
He criticised the station's management for changing its mind after first offering to give up the licence freely.
Lesin did not describe in detail how authorities would now act on the order to shut the station down, but said: "I still hope there will not be a blank screen."
TV6 General Director Yevgeny Kiselyov said on air: "It is exclusively up to the Media Ministry to say when they will take TV6 off the air. "As for the (bailiff's) orders...we will certainly appeal against them within 10 days in the Moscow arbitration court. Our lawyers are already working on this."
The bailiff's order seeks to enforce a previous court ruling made at the request of an oil company's pension fund, which owns a 15 percent stake and sued under a law that allows minority shareholders to liquidate bankrupt companies.
TV6 says a new line-up of popular shows has improved its financial prospects.
The Media Ministry has already announced a tender in March or April for permanent control of the station.
Boris Nemtsov, leader of the free-market Union of Right-wing Forces political party said that the new legal collision course raised the odds that the station would be ruined.
"This is a giant step toward breaking the company up," he said in an interview with NTV.
"If in April TV6 no longer exists in its present form, we will only be able to speak about free speech in this country in quotation marks."
Back to the Top Next Article
- Back to the Top -