Businessman Irakli Rukhadze announced on February 6 selling the shares of pro-government TV Imedi channel, naming Prime Media Global, Imedi’s business partner, and the channel’s current management as the new owners. Imedi has been among the key mouthpieces of the ruling Georgian Dream party, with an openly declared editorial policy of preventing the former ruling party, the United National Movement, from returning to power.
According to Rukhadze, the shares will be split evenly between Prime Media Global and the channel’s management, which includes current Director General Maka Lomidze and her four deputies. The businessman cited, among others, the economic factors, saying that ownership of the channel “creates additional difficulties” and harms the core activity of him and his partners: “making investments in Georgia’s economy.”
Citing the documentation of the purchase, Georgian media sources, including BM.ge and Businesspressnews, reported that 100 percent of shares of the Georgian Media Production Group, which owned the TV channel Imedi, were sold to Prime Media Global for a symbolic price of GEL 1,000 (approximately USD 370).
“After long and tense consultations with my partners, we decided that, in today’s situation, the most reasonable solution is to bid farewell to Imedi,” Rukhadze said in a statement published by the channel. Rukhadze said that, ultimately, the choice on who would be the new owners fell on Prime Media Global,” which “has been cooperating with Imedi for many years in the sale of advertising,” while “the remaining 50% will pass into the ownership of Maka Lomadze and her four deputies.”
Prime Media Global is owned by Ilia Mikelaishvili, the founder and director of Pirveli LLC. He was among the candidates for membership of the Communications Commission, the state media regulator, during the December vote, but lost to former ruling party MP Goga Gulordava, who was later also elected as ComCom’s new chair.
According to Rukhadze, in 2018, when he was asked by the family of Badri Patarkatsishvili, the late tycoon who founded the channel, to buy the TV assets, he and his partners agreed that Imedi would “stand guard over the country’s stability and democratic development.” The businessman said that this meant above all in “not allowing United National Movement [former ruling party] and its offshoots to return to power, stir up the country once again and recapture Imedi.”
He added that since 2022, “stirring up the country” also included the threat “of drawing Georgia once again into a war with Russia.”
“Imedi’s purpose was never the unconditional support of Georgian Dream. However, supporting Georgian Dream against the United National Movement was an easy decision to make,” the businessman said. “It can be said that over the past seven to eight years, we have more or less achieved our goals. Today, the United National Movement and its satellite parties have effectively collapsed.”
Imedi TV was launched in 2003 by Badri Patarkatsishvili, who was funding the broadcaster up until his death in February 2008. In November 2007, when the riot police broke up anti-government demonstrations, supported by Patarkatsishvili, Imedi TV was raided by the police, taking it off the air.
After Patarkatsishvili’s death, ownership of the television station was taken over by the tycoon’s distant relative Joseph Kay in controversial circumstances, triggering a three-year-long dispute about the broadcaster’s ownership. In the years leading up to Patarkatsishvili’s family stating about reaching a deal to reclaim the assets in 2012, the channel was run by Ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s long-time ally and former government member Giorgi Arveladze.
Media Finance Group B.V., co-owned by Rukhadze, acquired the channel from Georgian Media Production Group, belonging to Patarkatsishvili’s wife, Ina Gudavadze, in 2021.
More to follow…
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