“Restricted”: Intelligence and Security Service refuses to publish names of beneficial owners of ‘Primul în Moldova’ and ‘Accent TV’ stations

The Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) qualifies as a state secret the data on the identity of the beneficial owners of the channels First in Moldova and Accent TV. The specification is contained in a response by the institution to an official request for information sent by Media Azi late last year.

Media Azi requested information on the subject after the Audiovisual Council (CA) asked SIS, the National Anti-Corruption Centre (CNA) and the Competition Council on 4 October to investigate whether Primul in Moldova and Accent TV had changed their final beneficiary, following several reports in the press.

According to the quoted source, when asked to receive a copy of the reply issued by SIS to the CA, the institution’s representatives replied that the information “contains data that are the result of counterintelligence and special investigative activities carried out by SIS, thus being attributed to state secrecy (…), and the material bearer of the information bears the secrecy stamp Restricted”.

Media Azi also requested a copy from the CA, as well as confirmation or denial that the two TV stations are directly or indirectly affiliated to the Shor Party, as several media outlets have written.

The broadcasting authority justified its refusal to provide the data by referring to their secrecy.

The Audiovisual Council referred the matter to the three state institutions after it was informed on 22 September by Telesistem TV, the owner of Accent TV and Primul in Moldova, that the company had a new administrator, and several media outlets wrote that the two TV stations would thus come under the control of the Shor Party. The president of the institution, Liliana Vițu, invokes a reasonable suspicion of media concentration between TV6, Orhei TV, Primul in Moldova and Accent TV.

In November, it became known that Primul in Moldova and Accent TV had changed not only their managers but also their ultimate owners in Russia. On October 7, 2022, according to Ziarul de Garda, the new owner of the TV stations became Alexei Polunin, a citizen of the Russian Federation. The broadcasting authority was not informed about the changes and fined the company that owns the TVs for this reason.

The Commission for Exceptional Situations (CSE) approved on Friday 16 December a decision on the suspension of broadcasting licences for six TV stations in Moldova for the period of the state of emergency. The stations in question are “First in Moldova”, “RTR Moldova”, “Accent TV”, “NTV Moldova”, “TV6” and “Orhei TV”.

According to the CSE provision, the decision was taken “in order to protect the national information space and prevent the risk of disinformation through the spread of false information or attempts to manipulate public opinion, based on the list of natural and legal persons subject to international sanctions and available information on their control over certain media service providers, as well as the multiple findings in the monitoring reports of the Audiovisual Council on violations of the Audiovisual Media Services Code of the Republic of Moldova, including the application of sanctions for the lack of correct information in the coverage of national events and the war in Ukraine”.