Tag: media

Albanian Tax Inspectors Fine Critical Media Outlets

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Albania’s General Tax Directorate has imposed several hefty fines on several TV stations, most of which are critical of the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama, the media companies said on Tuesday.

Ora News, a TV station based in Tirana, was fined around 50 million leks (437,000 euros) while Focus News, the company that owns the News 24 channel, was fined around 20 million leks (173,000 euros).

The government’s Media and Information Agency declined to respond to BIRN’s request for detailed comments about the reasons for the fines, but offered a general response.

“The government of Albania shows maximum respect for the media and the journalists and their duty,” the agency said.

“We emphasise that the government mission is to rigorously implement the law, which is equal for all and this is a universal principle,” it added.

It said BIRN’s specific questions were “of a too technical nature” and suggested contacting the Tax Directorate. The Tax Directorate didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment and its press office didn’t respond to phone calls.

Hysenbelliu Group, the group of companies that owns one of the television stations that were fined, told BIRN the fine was one of several targeting its companies, claiming that the intention was to silence its media outlets.

Last September, a hotel owned by the group was blown up by the government who claimed it was illegally constructed.

“This latest fine is part of a multipronged campaign against this group in which tax inspectors, the customs administration, the National Inspectorate for the Protection of the Territory and other government agencies have undertaken against the Hysenbelliu Group of companies, who also own the News 24 channel, Balkanweb [news website] and Panorama [newspaper],” the group’s press office told BIRN.

“For us there is no doubt that this campaign, which amounts to some 17 million euros in fines, is directed by the Prime Minister Edi Rama in revenge against the editorial line of this media group,” it said.

Ora News director Brahim Shima said the fine was yet another attempt to close the station, which has been under state administration since 2020, which includes the period during which tax inspectors believe that it under-reported its tax ownings.

“This fine is simply aiming to shut down the channel, thus closing the space for carry out journalistic duties in an independent way,” Shima said.

The report on the inspection of Focus News, seen by BIRN, said that the tax inspectors found unlawful salaries being paid “below the average market rate” for the specific profession and therefore recalculated the company’s tax dues assuming that the staff were employed with a salary equal to the average.

Based on this reasoning, the inspectors concluded that the company should have paid some 7.3 million leks (over 63,000 euros) more in social and health insurance contributions

The inspectors also calculated that the company underpaid personal income tax to the tune of around 3.5 million leks (some 30,000 euros).

Tax informality is perceived as being widespread in Albania with companies keeping separate books of accounts, one for tax purposes and the other for management purposes in order to under-report revenue, salaries and tax dues. In such cases, it is believed that companies pay salaries partly via bank transfers and partly in cash to evade detection.

In December 2021, a file containing wage data for some 630,00 Albanians, the entire workforce in the country, was leaked online – the first time in which such data was made available publicly and could be analysed independently.

It was observed that scores of companies reported unfeasibly low salaries for professional jobs, such as lawyers employed for a declared salary of some 30,000 leks (260 euros) a month, the country’s minimum wage.

The government announced it would start to tackle the issue, and based on this initiative, the Tax Directorate decided to send inspectors to media companies.

However, the report on Focus Media Group stated that it found no traces of the company employing unregistered employers and no traces of double bookkeeping. But it concluded that some of the employees had salaries “below the market average for the specific profession”.

Turkey’s Communications Chief Accuses Reuters of ‘Manipulation’

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Fahrettin Altun, head of the Communications Directorate under the Turkish Presidency, has accused Reuters news agency of “systemic manipulation” and “fake news” after it published a special report on how he and his staff control the newsrooms of Turkish media.

“This is not the first time that Reuters, an apparatus of perception operations and systematic manipulation targeting Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkey, publishes misleading and fake news,” Altun wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

A Reuters special report prepared by Jonathan Spicer wrote on Wednesday that from an office tower in Ankara, officials shape the nation’s news – and always to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s advantage.

The report added that the Communication Directorate often calls journalists and editors by phone and sends WhatsApp massages to instruct the media about their coverage.

Altun dismissed the claims and insisted on their good work. “Being targeted by the UK-based news agency Reuters is a sign that we are on the right track and a badge of honour,” Altun said.

Altun also accused Reuters of manipulation and fake news on certain topics, such as distorting Erdogan’s statements, Turkey’s military operations in Syria, the country’s economic crisis and the failed coup attempt in 2016.

“This is the sort of news agency that attempts to target the Turkey Communications Model and the Directorate today. We know perfectly well Reuters’ intentions, the purpose it serves and what it is doing for that purpose,” Altun said.

Altun, who has no previous media experience, was appointed to head the Directorate of Communications in 2018 under the new presidential system, in which there are almost no checks and balances.

“The Directorate, with an annual budget of around 680 million lira ($38 million), was tasked with coordinating government communication. It grew out of the old Directorate of Media, Press and Information, whose main role was issuing press cards to journalists. But its responsibilities reach much wider, including countering ‘systemic disinformation campaigns’ against Turkey through a unit the Directorate established this year,” Reuters wrote in its special report.

The directorate employs media monitors, translators, legal and public relations staff in Turkey and abroad.

“It has 48 foreign offices in 43 countries worldwide. These outposts deliver to headquarters weekly reports on how Turkey is portrayed in foreign media,” Reuters wrote, quoting an insider.

Altun and his Directorate are often accused of intervening heavy-handedly in the media.

“The government strategy is to make everyone see, hear and read only the government line,” Osman Vedud Esidir, a journalism professor, told Reuters.

Since the 2016 failed coup attempt resulted in a major crackdown on dissenting voices, the Turkish media and press have come under increasing government control.

Turkey ranked in 149th place out of 180 countries in 2022 in the latest press freedom index of the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF It classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

Turkey Condemned for Expelling Greek Journalist

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Turkey has come under criticism after deporting Evangelos Areteos, a journalist working for Greek news outlet Real, on August 25 and forbidding him from returning, citing “public order” concerns.

Gurkan Ozturan, coordinator of Media Freedom Rapid Response at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said that the decision should be reversed.

“Setting up barriers against media freedom is unacceptable. We call upon Turkish authorities to lift this restriction and allow journalists and media organisations to operate freely and to allow the people in Turkey and Europe to enjoy their right to access information and news,” Ozturan told BIRN.

Areteos wrote on Monday on Twitter that he believes he was deported because of a reporting trip he made to northern Syria in 2015 and his travels and connections throughout Turkey.

He described the Turkish decision to deport him as “a deeply saddening development that leaves me with grief”.

“After 23 years, during which I lived for eight years and then travelled and worked in Turkey, the Turkish authorities decided to deport me and forbade me to return for reasons of ‘public order’,” he said.

The decision has also been condemned by other media freedom organisations.

“Greek journalist Evangelos Areteos’ long history working in Turkey should not come to an unceremonious end due to authorities’ disapproval of his work,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, programme director at the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

“Authorities must allow Areteos to return to Turkey, where he should be able to report freely and without fear of retaliation,” de la Serna added.

“The expulsion of Areteos, the writer of the Greek-based daily Real, from Turkey, where he has lived for many years, sadly points to the threshold of the [Turkish] authorities’ intolerance for criticism,” Erol Onderoglu, Turkey representative for Reporters Without Borders, wrote on Twitter.

Areteos is well known on both sides of the Aegean Sea. As well as working for Real, he is a non-resident research fellow at the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Nicosia, Cyprus and a research associate with Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy’s Turkey programme, a think-tank based in Athens.

Alexandra Voudouri, a Greek journalist and analyst with Macropolis.gr and Athina 9,84FM told BIRN that Areteos’ work has been invaluable for “bridging” Greek and Turkish societies, “something that is missing nowadays”.

“And what is really sad is that Turkey is essentially ‘burning’ this bridge as well,” Voudouri said.

Turkish political scientist Seren Selvin Korkmaz expressed a similar opinion.

“While the government builds a wall around itself, it also closes Turkey to the world,” Korkmaz wrote on Twitter.

“Journalist Areteos has been travelling to Turkey for 23 years and reporting meticulously, he was also trying to break the prejudices about Turkish society. The government has proven itself by expelling him,” she said.

Turkish Journalists Demand New State Advertising Law After Court Ruling

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Turkish journalists have urged parliament to immediately prepare a new law after the Constitutional Court annulled the current law on the distribution of public advertising revenues and ruled that the state agency violated the freedom of the press.

“The Constitutional Court ruled that the sentences given by the Press Advertising Agency to newspapers violated the freedom of the press. We call on the Advertising Agency to act on this ruling and for parliament to change the law that leads to arbitrariness,” the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, said on Friday.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that the fines imposed on the press by the Press Advertising Agency, BIK, violated press freedom. “The BIK has turned into penalizing tool that can have a deterrent effect on some members of the press,” the court said.

According to the court, the BIK cut the media’s public ad revenues for 39 days in 2018, for 143 days in 2019 and 572 days in 2020, calling it “a systematic problem”.

The Constitutional Court also cancelled the related law on the BIK, saying: “The limits of the authority of the BIK were widened in an unpredictable way”.

Following the ruling, parliament must create a new law. Meanwhile, the BIK announced that it will not impose any new fines until the new law is adopted by parliament.

International media watchdogs and critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian rule say that the indefinite bans and fines imposed by the BIK represent another tool to suppress dissent.

State ad revenues are vital for the survival of many small and independent media in Turkey and the BIK is entitled to distribute these revenues and to cut public advertising for any outlet that violates press ethics.

Turkey ranked in 149th place out of 180 countries in 2022 in the latest press freedom index of watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

Serbia Proves a Media Market Too Far for Hungary’s TV2… For Now

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Hungary’s TV2 has yet to officially respond over its failure to win a license for terrestrial digital broadcasting in Serbia on Friday, though speculation is growing that the decision by the Serbian media regulator to postpone awarding a fifth license could be designed to allow the Hungarian company more time to raise the necessary funds to finance such a venture.

The omission of TV2 – the largest private TV station in Hungary which leans heavily towards the government of Viktor Orban in its coverage – in the list of licensees was a surprise to many, given the warm relations between the Hungarian prime minister and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, as well as suspicions of political influence in the tender after Serbia’s media regulator handed licenses to four reliably pro-government TV stations.

Furthermore, Hungarian business interests allied to the Fidesz government, in the media and other sectors, have been active over the past few years investing in Balkan countries like Slovenia and Montenegro, and many expect further such expansions in the region.

Yet Serbia’s Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, REM, announced on Friday it had granted national TV licenses for broadcasting via terrestrial digital transmission to four TV stations that already had them: Pink, Happy, Prva and B92.

The REM Council said on Friday that, “due to the great interest in obtaining a license for television broadcasting… the Council of REM made a decision to call for a tender for the award of another license for the so-called ‘fifth frequency’”. Fourteen TV stations in total competed in the tender.

REM Council president Olivera Zekic told the media that broadcasters will have to apply again for the fifth frequency and that she expects the process to be over by the end of autumn.

The Hungarian government-allied media did not report on TV2’s failure in Serbia, but insiders are speculating that the delay in awarding the fifth frequency is perhaps no coincidence. Hungary’s economy is suffering from the war in Ukraine, spiralling inflation and a plunging currency, while TV2 itself will face new taxes from next year, meaning it could currently lack the financial means to embark upon such a foreign venture.

TV2 – owned by Orban’s childhood friend Lorinc Meszaros whose stratospheric rise from simple gas fitter to Hungary’s richest person is unparalleled in the democratic world – certainly seemed set on making its foray into Serbia.

Miklos Vaszily, president of TV2, said in an interview in June that his station has a “strategic interest in expanding into the Adriatic or the Balkan region”. He expressed optimism about winning one of the licenses on offer in Serbia, since the station had put together a professionally strong application and he believed “new actors were welcome with the Serbian media authority”.

According to the specialized news site Media1, TV2 established a local company TV2 RS Broadcasting in Serbia with seed capital of 100,000 euros. TV2’s Serbian company – chaired by French-Bulgarian Pavel Stanchev, CEO of both TV2 Group and Slovenian Planet TV, and Spela Pirnat, the Slovenian director of Planet TV – was expected to build on the experiences and business model of the Slovenian broadcaster.

Planet TV, the third biggest Slovenian station, was bought by TV2 in 2020. Given TV2’s notorious pro-Hungarian government propaganda – journalists pledged allegiance to Orban publicly during the spring election campaign – it was of no surprise to observers that Planet TV became a mouthpiece for the nationalist-populist government of former prime minister Janez Jansa, Orban’s ideological ally in Slovenia, until he was voted out of office in the spring.

TV2 also planned to take over RTL Croatia, but that deal did not materialise.

Bulgarian TV Crew Attacked in Serbia Working on Pollution Story

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A TV crew of the “Traces Remain” investigative show of Bulgarian National Television, BNT, were attacked on Tuesday, June 14, on a road in front of the Podvirovi mine near Bosilegrad in southeast Serbia, Safejournalists organization reported on Wednesday.

The journalists came to Serbia to do a story about environmental pollution in the border area in the municipality of Bosilegrad.

Safejournalists said in a press release that when the journalists and activists approached the mine, about 50 meters from the entrance a minibus blocked their way, so they had to continue on foot.

“At that moment, six or seven people, including the director of the mine, attacked the crew, first by throwing rocks at them and then by punching,” it said.

Miodrag Vukajlovic, the mine director from Bosil metal company, was identified as one of the attackers, along with his chief of security, BNT said.

BNT reported that the Consul General of Bulgaria in Nis, Dimitar Canev, came to the site and, with his help, a report was submitted to the police in Bosilegrad.

The TV crew included journalist Bogdana Lazarova, cameramen Dimitar Slavov and Nikolai Andreev and technician Robert Vecov. Green activists from Sofia Dimitar Kumanov and Valentin Janev, Branko Mitov and Dimitar Dimitrov from Bosilegrad were also present.

Montenegro May Seek Expert Help on Editor’s Unsolved Murder

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic on Friday said the government is ready to ask foreign experts to help solve the failed investigation into the murder of the editor Dusko Jovanovic 18 years ago.

The editor-in-chief and owner of the daily newspaper Dan, well known for his opposition to the then government, was shot dead on leaving his office in Podgorica on May 27, 2004. He had received numerous death threats.

Abazovic called on the Special State Prosecution to reopen the investigation and find the preparators.

“The government is ready to accept international expertise, which is one of the possibilities… The people who can still testify in this case should get some status of cooperated witnesses and do what they should be doing,” Abazovic told the media.

In 2009, a former karate champion, Damir Mandic, was sentenced to 30 years for the killing, but the verdict was overturned in 2014, forcing a new trial. That ended in 2016 with a 19-year sentence.

Jovanovic’s family and their lawyers say Mandic did not act alone and that the circumstances of the murder have never been fully clarified, nor the masterminds brought to justice.

On Friday, Jovanovic’s sister, Danijela Pavicevic, said that family members were already contacted by the state prosecution.

“The former authorities and prosecutors didn’t show any will to solve this murder, but the attitude of the new prosecutors towards this crime gives us optimism,” she told the daily Vijesti.

Last May, former Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic and then Deputy PM Abazovic vowed to solve the killing, expressing full support for the work of a special commission created under a previous government in 2014 to monitor investigations into such attacks.

Members of the new Commission, led by the program director of Vijesti, Mihailo Jovovic, are journalists, media and NGO representatives, and from the Interior Ministry, police, State Prosecution and National Security Agency.

Jovovic said the commission had already determined irregularities in the murder investigation, stressing that they will continue working on the case.

“I am sure that hiring an expert, foreign or domestic, would help the Commission to determine what was wrong from the very beginning of this ineffective investigation,” Jovovic told BIRN.

In last year’s progress report, the European Commission said Montenegro had made only limited progress in addressing violence against journalists and media, adding that an effective judicial follow-up of Jovanovic murder remains to be ensured.

Opposition Leader Slams Erdogan for Sending Khashoggi Case to Saudis

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, has condemned a Turkish court ruling approved by the Turkish Justice Ministry which handed the Jamal Khashoggi murder case over to Saudi Arabia.

Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 when he visited the consulate to arrange his marriage papers.

Kilicdaroglu accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of putting “a price on our honour”.

“No matter what you believe, you cannot put a price on Jamal Khashoggi, who was the victim of a terrible murder on your land,” Kilicdaroglu, the president of social-democratic Republican People’s Party, CHP said in a video message on Twitter late Wednesday.

Kilicdaroglu said the decision was immoral.

“Morality is the state’s foundation. Those who buried Turkey’s honour in the Saudi Embassy’s garden shook the foundation of the state,” he added.

On Wednesday, the appeal against the decision to transfer the case, brought by Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz, was rejected by Ankara’s 14th Administrative Court.

“The Republic of Turkey cannot give up its sovereign rights in such a way,” Gokmen Baspinar, a lawyer for Cengiz, had urged in the appeal.

According to the T24 website, which has seen court documents, Turkey handed over the Khashoggi case to Saudi Arabia out of “international courtesy”.

The decision came at a time when Turkey wants to repair relations with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan will visit Saudi Arabia during Eid-Al-Fitr on May 2.

According to some observers, Saudi Arabia’s precondition for this improvement in ties was the transfer of the Khashoggi case.

With the Turkish Justice Ministry’s approval, a court in Istanbul on April 7 ruled that the case should be transferred to Saudi Arabia.

In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five men to death and three others to various prison terms for Khashoggi’s murder but the death sentences were later changed to prison terms after Khashoggi’s son pardoned his father’s murderers.

Since the murder and an international outcry, Saudi authorities have claimed that Khashoggi was killed by a rogue execution team without the knowledge of top Saudi officials – a claim dismissed by experts and human rights organisations.

Turkey’s decision to send the case to Saudi Arabia shocked human rights defenders who said this would end all hope of justice.

Pro-Kremlin Online Rhetoric Thrives in Orban’s Hungary

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

After Viktor Orban’s re-election as Hungary’s prime minister for a fourth consecutive term, pro-Russian propaganda continued to spread online in the country despite the Budapest government’s official support for the EU’s imposition of sanctions on Moscow.

Two such cases are documented in this latest bi-weekly review of online violations compiled by BIRN’s monitors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

Meanwhile, journalists have been targeted online in Serbia and Romania, while recordings of conversations published online highlight political frictions and cases of alleged graft in Bosnia and North Macedonia

Ukraine war misinformation spread in Hungary

Despite voting for EU sanctions and showing humanitarian support for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, Hungary continues to show some reluctance to fully join the European bloc in condemning the Russian invasion.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, after his fourth electoral victory on April 3, cited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as his opponent in his victory speech, confirmed he will not take any action against the Russia-founded International Investment Bank and insisted that Russia’s Rosatom would continue building a new nuclear power plant in Hungary.

Given this context, it is clear why pro-Russian propaganda is so widespread in Hungary, where pro-government media support Orban’s ruling party Fidesz.


Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary and President of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) Zsolt Semjen (L) and the head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyas hold a press conference after closing the polling stations for the general election and national referendum on the child protection law in the Balna convention center in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/SZILARD KOSZTICSAK

On April 4, thousands of Hungarian Facebook users started sharing pictures of a man covered in Nazi tattoos, claiming that he was the “deputy police chief of Kyiv”. However, the man, whose name was Artem Bonov, did not appear in the list of employees on the Kyiv Police website and was found to be a well-known far-right activist instead.

On April 8, two separate cases of misinformation and propaganda were recorded in Hungary. In the first of the two, several Hungarian-language Russian propaganda sites and their Facebook pages spread false information that there was no massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and that the reports of civilian casualties were fake.

Some articles that included a video of carnage in Bucha falsely claimed that one of the dead bodies lying on the street was actually moving, that there was evidence that the massacre did not take place, and that recordings made after the recapture of the town were staged.

In the second case, following the adoption of the fifth package of sanctions targeting the Russian and Belarusian economies by the European Parliament, the Hungarian State news agency MTI reported the news as if Fidesz MEPs had not voted in favour of the sanctions.

However, despite a claim by Fidesz party MEP Kinga Gál, who said on Facebook that her fellow Fidesz MEPs voted overwhelmingly against the proposal to impose an embargo on gas, oil and nuclear power from Russia, the EU proposal was supported by Fidesz MEPs.

Journalists targeted in Serbia and Romania

Journalists continue to be verbally attacked by pro-government media and political figures across the region, and the beginning of April saw several incidents in Serbia and Romania.


People walk past a puddle reflecting an election billboard of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade, Serbia, 04 April 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

On April 1, Verica Marincic, a journalist from the town of Indjija in Serbia who works for the IN Medija website, reported that she received serious threats via Facebook.

Marincic said she believes that the threatening messages were connected to an article she published about the behaviour of a local priest who was taken into custody some days earlier after he refused to pay for some items from the local Lidl store.

In another case on April 5, sports journalist Milojko Pantic said his YouTube channel, which also hosts political content critical of the government led by the Serbian Progressive Party, had been removed from the platform without explanation.

Pantic said he believed that the shutdown of his channel was probably related to the release on the YouTube channel of his show about Serbia’s democratic failings, which was uploaded before the parliamentary and presidential elections on April 3.

Meanwhile in Romania, Reporters Without Borders said in a report on its website that press freedom remains vulnerable as “the government’s vision of journalism and freedom of expression encourages censorship and self-censorship”.

The media watchdog added that “mechanisms for funding the media are, in many cases, opaque or even corrupt, and editorial policies are subordinated to the interests of owners, who often use them as propaganda tools”.

In one recent example of the troubled media environment in the country, well-known investigative journalist Emilia Sercan said on April 4 that she was targeted after she published material claiming that Romanian prime minister Nicolae Ciuca plagiarised part of his doctoral thesis.

“In the course of a single month, I was targeted in three separate incidents – threats, defamation and intimidation – all related to my work as an investigative journalist. According to the evidence in my possession, one of the defamatory acts was carried out with the complicity of a certain state institution’s employees,” said Sercan.

She also said she was sent some revealing pictures of herself, taken about 20 years ago by a former fiancé, from an unknown person on Facebook Messenger.

In response to the incident, the International Press Institute and other media freedom NGOs issued an appeal to the Romanian authorities calling for a swift and independent investigation.

Politicians targeted in Bosnia and North Macedonia

The Bosnian political scene remains deeply divided and fractious. In one recent example of this, the Klix.ba website published a recording on which Jelena Trivic, the vice-president of the Party of Democratic Progress and a member of the Republika Srpska National Assembly, is heard threatening former councillor Ivan Begic.

On the recording, which was made ahead of local elections in 2020, Trivic tells Begic, who served on Banja Luka City Council, that he “will be buried”. Klix.ba says the recording has been authenticated, but the Party of Democratic Progress claimed that it was an edited version of the original tape.


Former prime minister of North Macedonia Nikola Gruevski (C) leaves the Budapest-Capital Regional Court after his extradition trial in Budapest, Hungary, 27 June 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ZOLTAN MATHE

In another incident involving recordings of private conversations published online, this time in North Macedonia, two audio recordings of a conversation allegedly between former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and businessman Orce Kamchev were released by an unknown source on April 3.

In the conversation, voices appearing to be those of Gruevski and Kamchev discuss a court case in which they are both involved. The voice that is claimed to be that of Kamchev says that he gave a statement saying that Gruevski had nothing to do with buying plots of land on Mount Vodno for 1.2 million euros. The authenticity of the recordings has not yet been confirmed.

Fake news, cyberattacks and other online violations

Incidents of disinformation and unverified claims, as well as cases of cyber fraud, continue to be a problem in many countries’ digital environments.

In Bosnia, a spoof article saying that Apple has created wedding rings that allow couples to monitor their spouses’ movements went viral after it was published by the Zanimljivo satirical humour website. The article was reposted as genuine news even though the fact-finding site Raskrinkavanje reported that it was not intended to be taken seriously.

Another case saw several online media and news websites in North Macedonia post unverified claims about the death of Croatian handball player Denis Toth, who is believed to have died as a result of injuries sustained in a fight after leaving a nightclub in Skopje. The unverified claims sparked a lot of speculation on social media in the country about the reason for Toth’s death.

Police were forced to intervene in North Macedonia after the reappearance of a notorious Telegram group entitled Public Room, a forum for sharing explicit photos of young women. The latest iteration of the group, in which photos, videos, information from social networks and phone numbers of girls and women in the country were posted, had close to 1,500 members. After a few days, the police intervened and the group was closed down.

Finally, the National Directorate for Cyber Security in Romania said there had been a massive increase in cyber-attacks against state institutions and private companies in the initial days of the war in Ukraine. It claimed that Russian IPs had been involved in reconnaissance attacks on Romanian state and private companies in the energy sector.

Powerful Albanian Businessmen Pick up Struggling TV Channels

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Powerful, politically-connected businessman Shefqet Kastrati has entered Albania’s crowded media market with the purchase on Monday of Euronews Albania, following in the footsteps of Samir Mane who bought TV SCAN last month.

Balfin Group, 100 per cent owned by Mane, bought TV SCAN in March for 700,000 euros. TV SCAN is a small operator, controlling just 2.9 per cent of the TV advertising market in 2020, according to financial data analysed by BIRN. At the end of that year, TV SCAN had racked up losses of some 470,000 euros.

Mane has business interests in a wide range of sectors, from food and clothing to electricity, minerals, construction, and tourism.

On Monday, Kastrati’s Kastrati Group said it had bought 60 per cent of shares in Intermedia Group, which owns Euronews Albania, for an undisclosed sum. It announced plans to expand into Kosovo and North Macedonia.

Euronews Albania was founded in 2019 under a franchise agreement with Euronews, the European news network owned by a Portuguese company linked to the family circle of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Kastrati has interests in fuel, construction, tourism and insurance, besides owning the concessionary firms operating the highway linking Albania and Kosovo and Tirana International Airport.

Euronews hit the ground running in Albania, reporting revenues of some 214 million leks, roughly 1.8 million euros, in 2020 or some 5.3 per cent of the market. It accumulated some 59 million leks of losses, however, during the first two years of operations, eating into some 60 per cent of the subscribed capital.

The Albanian television market is dominated by Klan and Top Channel, the two main operators with combined revenues accounting for some 63 per cent of the total market turnover.

The market, however, is far from transparent.

On Monday, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Ylli Ndroqi, a media owner in Albania, for using media outlets formerly under his control to “extort and blackmail Albanian citizens through demands for money and advertising purchases in exchange for withholding publication of negative media stories.”

Earlier this month, an administrative row within Top Channel, the country’s leading operator, caused a war of words between the management and the recently fired director of a major show, with each accusing the other of blackmail and corruption.

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