The Public Chamber is going to Tomsk to protect local TV-2 journalists from pressure from the Internal Affairs Directorate

The working group of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation will arrive in Tomsk to verify the application of the General Director of CJSC TV Radio Company TV-2 Arcadia Mayofis on pressure on a television company. TV-2 announced that they were crushed due to the coverage of the business of entrepreneur Vakhnenko , who was thrown out of the window of the fourth floor during the interrogation in the police, and then the body was buried in the forest.

"At a meeting of the Commission on Communications, Information Policy and Freedom of Word, it was decided that the working group will come to Tomsk, which will include a member of the Public Chamber, Director of the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, Alexander Brod," the Interfax agency was told on Friday in the press service of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.

According to the interlocutor of the agency, the working group included representatives of the college of lawyers Pavel Astakhov and the glace protection fund.

In addition to a personal visit, the Commission of the Public Chamber decided to apply to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General’s Office with a request to conduct an audit on the appeal of the CEO of TV-2.

Gennady Nikiforov, an employee of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Internal Affairs Directorate in the Tomsk Region, is accused of the murder of Vakhnenko. Igor Vakhnenko disappeared on September 30, 2007. As it became known during the investigation of his disappearance, the entrepreneur was taken for an interrogation to the UBEP employee Gennady Nikiforov. During the interrogation, the businessman became ill. Having decided that Vakhnenko had died, the head of the UBEP threw it out of the window, and then buried the body in the forest. In August, the case was transferred to court .

The general director of TV-2 in his statement to the Public Chamber said that after oral threats of the Internal Affairs Directorate, a criminal case on the fact of the acquisition of real estate in 2003 by a structure associated with television companies. In his opinion, "the circle of the interrogated and the circle of materials that requested the Internal Affairs Directorate was constantly expanding, and in the end it was generally somehow connected with this matter."

“We were silent, regularly went to interrogations, thought that common sense would prevail. But for almost a year it all lasts, they obviously cannot find anything, and work on the principle of“ now we will begin to dig, at least something, let's find it. ”We are tired of it, and we turned to the Public Chamber,” Mayofis explained.

The head of the Internal Affairs Directorate Viktor Grechman considers it differently. According to him, since April 2007, the bodies of the Internal Affairs Directorate is investigated by a criminal case, which is in no way connected with either the TV aidiocompany TV-2 CJSC, nor with the TV-2 television company LLC. Mayofis, among other things, is the general director of Tomsk Media Group LLC, and "... this case is connected with the persons acting on behalf of Tomsk Media Group LLC, they tried to commit it. The attempt on fraud is illegally obtaining from the budget reimbursement of value added tax worth more than 1 million rubles. "

He also stated that "no searches with the seizure of documents on TV-2 were carried out, and no one, except one employee, was interrogated."

The TV-2 television company was formed in 1991 and is one of the first independent television companies in Russia, broadcasts on the cities of Tomsk, Seversk and Tomsk district of the Tomsk region. The television company was awarded the TEFI National Television Award 14 times.