Roman Malinovsky, Director of the Accent-TV channel, regards as “absolutely unlawful and made to order” the decision by Judge Galina Moscalciuc of the Sectorul Buiucani Court of Chisinau to fine the company 130,000 lei in favor of Ruslan Popa, Chairman of the just registered Communist Reformist Party (PCR).       

Roman Malinovsky stated at a news conference at Infotag today that during the trial, Judge Moscalciuc committed minimum 10 direct procedural violations. The channel director described only 3 of them at the news conference.      

“For instance, the judge violated the limitation period for lodging a claim, which constitutes 30 days. The TV program concerned was cast last November 30, but Mr. Popa decided to stand up in defense of his honor, dignity and professional reputation only on March 13, 2014”, said Malinovsky.      

Furthermore, Article 28 of the Law on the freedom of opinion stipulates that a television channel is free of whatever material responsibility for sayings made by participants in the course of a live TV program.    

The court ignored yet one more essential moment:  Ruslan Popa put forward material claims to the channel without giving the channel the right to reply.  

Malinovsky also thinks that the Judge ignored the Supreme Court of Justice Resolution #7 of December 24. 2012, which demands that a plaintiff must provide and cite concrete phrases that have insulted him.    

“However, Mr. Popa was unable to cite in the court even a single quotation from the television program, which he claims had insulted him. Maximum what he was able to say was his vague statement that “The whole program was but a lie and inventions against me”, and that’s all”, said Roman Malinovsky.        

He reminded that Accent-TV, which is really independent of the current Moldovan authorities and their vision of the mass media freedom, works under a constant pressure put on the company.      

“Last January, the authorities tried to exclude us from the broadcasting grid, putting all kinds of pressure and by mobilizing the Audiovisual Coordinating Council (ACC), an obedient media watchdog. Now they are trying to strangle us with the help of some dubious personalities and of invented claims. We are a small channel working in cable networks, and the sum of 130,000 is just ruinous for us. I have no doubt that the authorities want to shut down Accent-TV, for we refuse to take part in the big chorus of the glorification poured on the government by other media outlets”, stated the channel director.          

Infotag’s dossier:   Ruslan Popa was a MCP activist in a recent past, but divorced the organization and joined the Civil Congress, but left it in October 2013. Now he is a private entrepreneur and Chairman of the Civil Union for Direct Democracy (CUDD). Recently, he has registered with an enviable easiness a new political organization – the Communist Reformist Party, whose name and particularly whose Romanian-language acronym is the very replica of the opposition Moldovan Communist Party, which circumstance may well add confusion into the minds of a certain segment of the MCP electorate.