Luxembourg-based Adria News, N1’s owner of record, added five new members to its board on September 23, including United Group CEO Stan Miller, a move that N1 Program Director Igor Bozic thinks continues on the plans discussed by Miller and Telekom Serbia CEO Vladimir Lucic.
Miller and Lucic discussed changes to the management of United Media (owned by United Group) and promises they said were made to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in that regard.
“It seems that conversation actually revealed the true intentions behind what is happening within United Group, and that they are not abandoning the plan. Terms like faster bank operations and similar were mentioned, which suggest that there is indeed some kind of plan. The cause for concern is that none of us were informed — we simply noticed an entry in the registry in Luxembourg,” Bozic told Danas daily, adding that the true intentions behind the move remain unknown.
“We know they have been appointed as A-class managers, and our previous directors have been shifted to B-class managers. We still don’t have any explanation as to what that actually means. We assume they can now launch a reorganization of N1 without our knowledge. We’ve sent them a letter — primarily to the majority owner — in asking for clarification and what this will mean for our day-to-day operations,” he said. According to him, there is cause for concern that the decision could hamper or jeopardize N1’s independent editorial policy.
“We have our Editorial Guidelines, which were drafted by Editorial Board member Peter Horrocks, a longtime BBC journalist, where editorial policy is clearly separated from management,” Bozic said.
Danas recalled that Vucic said in February that some United Media journalists would lose their jobs and that he personally would give some of them jobs. Bozic said that he doesn’t know if the goal is simply to shut N1 down or even if that was Vucic’s idea when making deals.
“I don’t know exactly what it’s about, but it’s evident that the timing aligns with what he said back in February. He said then: ‘I’ll ask them in November — some will be fired, and I will give some of them jobs.’ It looks like the plan he made back then is now being carried out. We’re approaching November, and there culd be a link to his statement. We are not getting firm guarantees from our majority owners that this is not the case. Aside from declarative support for free and independent journalism, we haven’t received any concrete guarantees or explanations about what’s going on inside the company,” he said.
The changes on the United Group board come just a month after the OCCRP investigative network published a recording of the conversation between Miller and Lucic, in which the UG CEO spoke about reducing United Group’s operations in Serbia. According to the recording, the decision was made after a deal between Vucic and Nikos Stathopoulos, an senior manager at the BC Partners investment fund which has a majority stake in United Group.
Source: N1
