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Popular Albanian TV Station Accuses Berisha of Vendetta

19 04 2007  Top Channel claims investigations of tax evasion are the result of a government grudge against its criticism.

By Altin Raxhimi in Tirana (Balkan Insight, 19 April 07)

Albania’s main television station claims the government is putting pressure on it because it has criticised the ruling party while the government insists it is only tackling fiscal evasion.

Top Channel, the most popular television station in the country, and the company that owns it, Top Media Group, say that they are under continuous and unwarranted investigation from the tax authorities, and that this is a form of intimidation.

They also fear a new government sponsored bill, presented in Albanian parliament this week, is designed to cripple their finances by forcing them to sell half of their digital and satellite services for free.

Analysts are divided over who is right in the latest media battle. Some say that Top channel should come under exactly the same close financial scrutiny as any other business and blame the station for exaggerating the matter. Others insist that the authorities are putting pressure on the independent media.

“Both sides are telling their own half of the truth,” said Fatos Lubonja, an independent analyst in Tirana. “The government is right when it says that the media is distorting the truth,” he added. “But Top Channel is right when it complains that the government is conducting a selective campaign against them.”


Top Channel has long had poor relations with the authorities. It has been fiercely critical of the centre-right government of Sali Berisha ever since his Democratic Party narrowly won the 2005 general elections.

The strains started at that time. There is also a widespread perception that the government has a grudge with Top Channel programmes like the flagship Fiks Fare.

This show combines satire with investigative reporting and hidden cameras, and it has often embarrassed the government.

Tax officials have been investigating possible tax evasion by Top Channel for six months now, said Top Channel deputy general manager Skerdi Drenova.

Alban Jaho, a company executive, feared the new digital and satellite broadcast bill endangers the media group’s programming. It would force Digitalb, the digital and satellite arm of Top Media, to ask for digital broadcast license in six months. It would also oblige Digitalb, who rely on subscription for their revenues, to air half their satellite programming free of charge.

Jaho said this was an intentional attack by the government. It would throw Digitalb, which had been operating for three years and had invested millions of euros, to an uncertain future. He said the government has no right to enforce rules in satellite programming.

He says it is up to private companies to reach their own arrangements with satellite companies on charges.

The standoff between the government and one of the country’s largest media companies has, meanwhile, attracted the attention of opposition parties and free speech activists, who accuse the government of bullying.

On April 13, Mjaft, a civil rights movement that is critical of the government, said thousands of people responded to their appeal to gather in Tirana’s Skanderbeg Square to defend what they called the threats to media freedoms.

Political divisions in Albania are such that even the number of people at the rally became a political issue. While Mjaft said about 50,000 people showed up at the rally, although the government put the figure at less than 10,000.

“There were enough people to give a clear message,” said Erion Veliaj, Mjaft’s leader. He said the fate of Top Channel would set an important precedent.

“Top Channel is important [to free speech] because in a flock of animals, if you kill the lion, the other animals will give way,” he maintained.

The decision to hold the rally was made after Berisha, answering questions about tax evasion to a parliamentary hearing, claimed the “mafia is using the media”.

Top Media started out in 1998 and has grown to include Top Channel and Digitalb. It also owns Digitalb Mobile, a broadcaster in mobile phone band; VGA, an advertising agency; and Shqip, a daily newspaper.

Majlinda Bregu, a government spokeswoman, denied the government was pursuing a vendetta. Bregu said it was only trying to end the widespread practice of businesses dodging employment benefits.

Most media, as most employers in Albania are not registering their employees nor paying health and pension benefits for them. Even those companies that fully employ their personnel usually report only minimum salaries so that paid contributions to pension schemes are minimal.

“It is not honest, ethical, or professional to misuse the battles in the struggle against the informal labour market with the free speech and free press,” said Bregu.

However, few dispute that Berisha has a marked dislike of Top Channel and its president, Dritan Hoxha.

During negotiations on whether to host a debate between Fatos Nano, the Socialist leader, and Berisha in the run-up to the 2005 elections, Hoxha threatened both leaders with a blackout if his station was not allowed to broadcast, or at least co-broadcast, the debate.

Berisha was angered by the threat, telling reporters that such statements “can shake elevators, but not me”.

Observers took this as a reference to the February 2005 murder of a co-owner of Top Albania Radio, Vajdin Lame, killed by a remote-controlled bomb planted in the elevator of his apartment building, that caused fear among the station`s employees for their security.

Hoxha replied by accusing Berisha of not having changed his outlook since he was country’s president from 1992 to 1997, when he was widely criticised for trying to control the independent press. The TV debate never took place.

The government got a chance to get its own back in May 2006, when the government-controlled International Culture Center, which runs the site where Top Channel has its studios, threatened to expel the station from the premises on the grounds that it was paying only a miniscule rent.

The channel said it was being threatened with expulsion purely because of the content of some of its programmes.

The station said it had struck a 30-year rental arrangement with the government in 2000, when the government was offering cheap rents of state property to entrepreneurs to stimulate businesses.

Several months after, the authorities began looking at the Top Channel and Digitalb tax payments in detail, in what the station has called an attempt to intimidate independent media.

But the government wants to show that it is not concerned with the allegations. As the finance minister, Ridvan Bode, put it answering to Top channels`s attacks on the chief tax inspector: “Leave him alone. He is just a state employee doing his job.”

Altin Raxhimi is a Balkan Insight contributor. Balkan Insight is a BIRN’s online publication.