Giorgi Gabunia, Director General of Mtavari Arkhi, announced that Zaza Okuashvili [founder] has decided “to take action seemingly aligned with Bidzina Ivanishvili’s interests” by attempting to shut down the private TV company.
“At a time when Georgian people are fighting in the streets to defend their rights and remove an illegitimate government when protesters are openly being subjected to violence, brutally tortured, robbed, illegally detained, prosecuted, and thrown into prisons, and when journalists at the forefront of these events are targets of deliberate physical attacks, one of the founders of Mtavari Arkhi has decided to essentially join the mass violence initiated by ‘Georgian Dream’ and use the means at his disposal to employ violence against journalists,” Gabunia stated.
He went on to elaborate: “There is a very substantive suspicion that he is doing this in coordination with or for bargaining with the illegitimate government – as you probably know, Okuashvili has a serious ongoing legal dispute with Bidzina Ivanishvili, which does not exclude collaboration between them, but rather suggests that Okuashvili desperately needs to manipulate Mtavari Arkhi to reach an agreement in this dispute.”
Gabunia pledged that “to the extent we can, we will continue to fight and remain on air for our viewers and the Georgian people.” “Not even Putin’s friend Bidzina can stop us.”
