Internal investigation into Kosovo’s public broadcaster links decision to axe two BIRN TV shows from schedule to previous management’s connections to businessman Blerim Devolli.
Fadil Hoxha, adviser to the director of the Kosovo public broadcaster, Radio Television of Kosovo, RTK, has claimed, after conducting an internal investigation, that the broadcaster stopped airing two TV programmes made by BIRN Kosovo because of the former management’s ties to a businessman, Blerim Devolli.
RTK stopped broadcasting the shows, “Jeta ne Kosove” and “Drejtesia ne Kosove”, in 2020 after a BIRN investigation was aired accusing Devolli of violating anti-monopoly rules in the solar energy market.
BIRN’s “Jeta ne Kosove” TV programme aired the investigation “Unclean Energy: The Kosovar Who Would Own the Sun”, by Visar Prebeza and BIRN Kosovo director Jeta Xharra, on April 30, 2020.
“Just one day after the investigation was published on RTK, the broadcasting of ‘Jeta ne Kosove’ was halted, first on the internet and from June 12, on TV channels,” Hoxha, who was director of the RTK Independent Union at the time, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Hoxha’s internal probe was launched after a former RTK journalist raised questions about business influence on the media, and specifically on BIRN’s TV programmes, he said.
The investigation into Devolli by Prebreza and Xharra had uncovered a scheme in which shell companies owned by the businessman but registered in Malta stood to benefit from financial incentives to produce solar energy, violating Kosovo’s anti-monopoly rules by hiding the real owner of the companies.
Xharra said the internal RTK probe had “revealed what we were suspecting all along, that the ousting of our BIRN TV programmes from public TV was corrupt and, to top it all off, the director general who threw us out (Ngadhnjim Kastrati) ended up taking two year ‘vacation’ from public TV (which is happening right now) to work for private television in Albania linked to Devolli, so, working for the man we investigated in that programme”.
“Clearly, this DG has been rewarded nicely for kicking out the most awarded programme on RTK,” she added.
Hoxha noted that former RTK director Kastrati has been on unpaid leave since July 2024 and, since November 2024, has been general director of ABC News television in Albania.
“The official owner of ABC News is Esat Bojku. Esat Bojku is the son of the former general director of the Devolli Corporation, Ismet Bojku,” Hoxha wrote, explaining the connections with Devolli.
According to a BIRN Albania investigation, Esat Bojku established the company Media Holding LLC in Tirana in October 2022, and, two weeks later, bought the Dutch company Media ABC Holding BV, owner of the ABC News broadcaster, for 2.7 million euros.
Kastrati confirmed to BIRN that he is on unpaid leave from RTK for two years, and now has a five-year contract with ABC News in Albania.
In August 2023, the Pristina Basic Court annulled the national media regulator’s decision to issue a warning to BIRN Kosovo over the investigation into Devolli, which in 2020 won top prize at the EU Investigative Journalism Awards.
BIRN has been trying to reach Devolli and Bojku for comment since Sunday, but neither of them responded by the time of publication.
After the TV shows were dropped by RTK, BIRN applied again to air the “Jeta ne Kosove” and “Drejtesia ne Kosove” in a 2021 RTK competition for audiovisual programmes but did not receive any response ro the public broadcaster.
Hoxha wrote on Facebook that the director of the admissions commission in the competition, Xhymret Veliu, has claimed that his supervisors told him there were not the budgetary funds to cover the BIRN TV programmes. Veliu told BIRN he cannot comment because his contract does not allow him to talk to the media.
Source: BalkanInsight
