Daily Recipe: Bags Of Money With A TV Station On Top
Michael Hedges March 8, 2021 Follow on Twitter
When the Soviet Union collapsed, local oligarchs suddenly appeared in those various countries taking over every sort of business including media. Actually, they had always been there. Foreigners also raced in with bags of money, with or without customary introduction, snapping up media outlets. These foreigners were typically referred to as investors or entrepreneurs. Oligarch continues to be a pejorative term. Investor is an honorarium. One group group stuck around and the other, mostly, headed for the exits.
 Last week the US State Department placed sanctions on Ihor Kolomoiskyy, a Ukrainian oligarch, “due to his involvement in significant corruption,” said the statement (March 5). The order specifically cited “corrupt acts” when Mr. Kolomoiskyy was governor of a Ukrainian province in 2014 and 2015. “I also want to express concern about Kolomoyskyy’s current and ongoing efforts to undermine Ukraine’s democratic processes and institutions, which pose a serious threat to its future,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Mr. Kolomoiskyy and his family cannot now visit Disneyland or any other location in the US.
In Ukraine Mr. Kolomoiskyy is best known as the former principal owner of PrivatBank, which he is accused of looting to the tune of US$5 billion, an allegation he denies. He may (or may not) be the principal owner of 1+1 Media Group, a very large Ukrainian broadcaster. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy had a TV show for several years on the main 1+1 channel. President Zelenskiy and Mr. Kolomoyskyy are no longer friends. Mr. Kolomoyskyy may or may not currently reside in Israel, where he has citizenship. Oligarchs are sometimes tagged as “politically exposed individuals” by financial regulators.
Popular channel Inter TV has oligarchs in its family tree. Principal control of the channel seems to rest with GDF Media, owned by notorious banker, trader and money launderer Dmytro Firtash and two former officials of the deposed president Viktor Yanukovych. Russian state TV Channel One once held (maybe still) a minority stake. US authorities have been trying to get their hands on Mr. Firtash since 2013 over alleged bribery in a titanium trade. He has been fighting the extradition from Vienna, Austria. More recently, Mr. Firtash has been linked to the Wirecard bank scandal in Germany. His CV is littered with dodgy doings yet GDF Media continues to operate Inter TV.
Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) recently imposed sanctions on Viktor Medvedchuk, reported Reuters (February 19). The misdeeds involve dodgy trading of coal and financing terrorism. Mr. Medvedchuk is involved in multiple businesses, most running through the Russian Federation where his friend Vladimir V. Putin is president. He is widely suspected of being the true owner of three TV channels recently stripped of their licenses by the Ukraine media regulator for being fonts of Russian propaganda. Indeed, he then attempted to acquire a Lviv local TV channel to replace the loss. That, too, was blocked. He reportedly, UNIAN (June 30, 2019), acquired the TV business owned by the aforementioned Mr. Firtash, but that was quickly denied.
The biggest media house in Ukraine is StarLightMedia. It has several TV channels, a tabloid newspaper, an ad agency and a production house. It’s best known channels are SBT and ICTV. The company is owned by Viktor Pinchuk, whose other businesses include steel pipes and natural gas. His wife, Olena, is chairperson of StarLightMedia. She’s the daughter of former Ukraine president Leonid Kuchma.
Billionaire Rinat Akhmetov owns Media Group Ukraine. He is, arguably, Ukraine’s richest person. Holdings of Media Group Ukraine include newspapers - Segodnya - and several TV channels plus a production house and new media outlets. His real business is energy trading, largely coal, and the locus of his attention is the Russian separatist Donbass region. For Mr. Akhmetov, media relations are a combat sport, frequently suing for defamation. Like other Ukrainian oligarchs he owns a football club. But nothing beats his London digs; the penthouse at One Hyde Park.
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