In the beginning of the meeting, the Prime Minister of Georgia Lado Gurgenidze briefed the cabinet members on his recent meetings with the Executive Vice President of the News Corporation Mr. Martin Pompadur. On this the prime minister stated the following: "I am sure that the Georgian public is keenly interested in this issue, especially when the information on the presence of one of the leaders of the News Corp. in Tbilisi became widely known to our society. It is very true that after the endorsement of the new composition of the cabinet by the parliament on November 22, I had a telephone conversation with the head of the European Regional Branch of the Mews Corporation, Mr. Martin Pompadur, whom I have known from the business spheres for already ten years. He agreed on coming to Tbilisi and on November 25-26 the meetings were held, upon completion of which Mr. Pompadour returned to London. I will brief you on our questions, requests, or I would rather word it as urging and preconditions, because the information was spread about non-constructive position or even some exuberant demands supposedly put forward on our behalf.
We posed a number of questions, concerning the real ownership structure of the Imedi TV Company, its management etc., or in other words we asked the News Corp. to produce any contracts or other documents existing among or between the stake holders, in order to realize how the structure of the Imedi stake holders looked like. In fact, the documentation, dated end of October, beginning of November, which exists in the Georgian legal area or the act of delivery of the stocks, indicates to the 100% delivery. If the delivery of 100% took place at the end of October, 2007, then, to put it mild, the statements made by the News Corp. a year and a half ago or a year ago on the ownership of the shares or the fact of their being the owners is not confirmed by the Georgian register records. We asked them to produce the explanations on the documentary level. Apart from this, we also requested the minutes of the management board meetings or the sessions of the supervisors or the meetings of the stake holders that have taken place during this year, or even before; we also asked for the contracts or similar documentation concerning management of the Imedi television and we also requested the financial information since the day of establishing this TV, in order to know how this TV channel was financed during all these years, especially during recent years, because according to the information that they produced before the tax inspectorate, Imedi turns to be a not profitable company. These are all our questions posed; those who are familiar with managing business, will certainly agree with me that in any well organized, normal business, in case of willingness, retrieving this information and producing it would be a matter of a few hours, because such documentation is standard and must be kept in right order with any company or business enterprise.
As for the preconditions, requests or urgings, we have emphasized the wish of seeing the News Corp. as one of the players in the media space of Georgia, but we failed to receive the answers on their ownership of 100% of the shares in Imedi TV. We also proposed News. Corp. to expedite delivery of the documentation and somehow to spread this practice on all media facilities operating in our country, so that they would obey at least to the minimum of rules widely implemented in other countries. You all know that the same rules apply to the banking sphere which is a sensitive area as well. We understand the priority of this issue and therefore, offered the News Corp. to expedite the process, so that to speed up resolution of the problem. We agreed on some principles that afterwards would move to the legislation field and would be spread equally to all other media facilities.
This was the topic of our conversation with them and we also urged for the opportunity of revision of the complete financial information of the Imedi TV as well as other affiliated companies, so that to retrieve the source of financing and thus find the means of overlapping the losses. To our understanding, there's nothing unnatural or non-constructive, or impossible in our requests.
And finally, because of high priority of the issue, we proposed the News Corp. to create something similar to a Media Council which would have no legislative or other functions but be charged with only moral-ethical responsibilities. Its members could be selected by the News Corp. itself, because there are no such standards in our legal sphere so far. We proposed that during the pre-election campaign the British professional and ethic code for the media would be good enough to be practiced by the above said Council. The News Corp. is a well known company all over the world and very successful in their operations in Great Britain and therefore, they should be familiar with those norms. We also proposed that this Council or a Board could appear on TV and discuss the shortcomings of this or that media facility in following the rules of ethics. Of course we agreed that the mentioned norms would be shared by all TV companies operating in Georgia and the Imedi would not be an exception at all.
At closing of our meeting we expressed the wish that the journalists, who are willing to continue their career in politics, perhaps would abandon the journalist activities, because these two occupations are not compatible at all. This is all that we proposed as the pre-conditions and I believe that there's nothing undoable or non-constructive in it. Mr. Pompadur left for London for further consultations with his partners and we are waiting for the answer on our proposals", the prime minister asserted.
The press center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia