Shuster’s TV channel 3s.tv still goes on broadcasting in 2017, but it will repeat previous releases of shows, as the Detektor.Media informs.
The information about the continuation of broadcasts was confirmed by Elena Tofanchuk, Head of the Social Communications Service at LLC “TRK VIS”. “These are still repeats, and I do not know how we proceed”, as she stated.
The channels’ TV listings for January 2-8 are already known.
Mrs. Tofanchuk said that it was so far hard to talk about the TV channels’ future. As is known, in April, the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine clarified the situation regarding its claims against Mr. Shuster and announced a tax audit of the talk show host. Mr. Shuster was accused of non-presenting his tax statement for the loan of EUR 1.34 million contracted in 2008, as well as of personal income tax evasion amounting to UAH 2.1 million.
In addition, the officials of the “Savik Shuster Studio” were accused of understating value added tax totalling UAH 1.99 million by means of underpricing the show “Shuster Live” in 2012-2014. The member of the political council of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” (VO “Batkivschyna”) Andrei Senchenko said that Petro Poroshenko and his team had set the tax service against Mr. Shuster to shut down broadcasts of “Shuster Live”.
This year, on the air of “Shuster Live”, the President of the Political Values Research Center Oles Dony stated that the Office of the President of Ukraine had ordered to “put the squeeze” on Shuster during the summer, and after that the TV show host turned to Mr. Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko in view of putting pressure on the studio.
“When you were in disgrace, and when a great pressure was put on me, so you would not appear here. And when even you, Yuri Vitaliyovych, served time in prison and I had no right to talk about you, but always talked, I was not afraid then. Just think it over that you may want this studio”, as the TV show host spoke out.
In summer, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) appealed to the Ukrainian authorities, requesting to give up the harassment of independent TV channel and journalists. In particular, it was about Savik Shuster’s talk show“Shuster Live”. The statement was posted on the official web site of that federation.
Let us recall that on December 1, the official web site of Savik Shuster’s channel announced that as from 1 January, 2017, 3s.tv would cease its operation due to lack of funds and sponsors.
