Another media scandal is flared up in Ukraine - a change in the leadership and the owner of the opposition channel TBI is announced. On the official website of TVI, a message appeared that the channel journalist Artem Shevchenko was appointed new general director, and American Alexander Altman became the new investor. The Russian businessman Konstantin Kogalovsky, who considers himself the only real owner of the channel, called what was happening (after the guard did not let him into the premises) raider seizure. According to Kogalovsky, he did not sell TVI to anyone, and the change of his leadership and the owner occurred according to fictitious documents. Little is known about the new investor in the canal Alexander Altman. In the early 1990s, he left Odessa to the United States, it is assumed that Russian media Magnates were and remain his business partners. In 2008, Altman served as adviser to the Minister of Fuel and Energy of Ukraine Yuri Sold in the government of Yulia Tymoshenko. Initially, the owners of TV were Konstantin Kogalovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. A flared scandal can be connected both with the purchase of a channel by structures close to the Ukrainian authorities, and with the old conflict between its owners, says TBI journalist Mustafa Nayyem: In March this year, TVI turned five years old. Last fall, a number of frequencies were selected from the channel and excluded it from cable networks in some regions of Ukraine. According to the President of the channel Vitaly Portnikov, "the main task of the team should now be maintaining the independence of the editorial policy." From time to time, information appears in the Ukrainian press that the so -called family of the head of state Viktor Yanukovych forms his media holding on the eve of the presidential election. So far, this holding has several not very influential media. According to Mustafa Nayim, "most of the current TBI journalists will not work on this channel if it turns out that the new owner represents the interests of the Ukrainian authorities."
