Patarkatsishvili gives up Imedi
By Christina Tashkevich


They’re in charge now


Business tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili is passing off management rights for his Imedi media group, his business partners announced on October 31.

The news comes just days after Patarkatsishvili, Imedi’s founder, announced he would finance the country’s political opposition parties.

News Corp representatives told journalists in Tbilisi that Patarkatsishvili would grant Imedi’s power of attorney to their company, giving News Corp legal authority to manage Patarkatsishvili’s shares in the media holding.

The decision stemmed from political criticism of Imedi TV, one of the country’s two most watched television stations, as the “opposition’s channel,” journalists were told. Ceding management rights would keep the channel out of politics—something the prominent Patarkatsishvili looks increasingly ready to get in to.

Saying that Imedi reports stories fairly and lets viewers decide, News Corp vice president Martin Pompadour added that Imedi finds it difficult to produce balanced news reporting when the government is uncooperative.
“[If] the government boycotts the channel, [it becomes] a monologue, not dialogue,” Pompadour said.

This is not an unexpected step for Patarkatsishvili, who earlier announced he would cede control of financial issues to his multinational corporate business partner.
 
“I got in contact with my partners and said that the situation in Georgia is very difficult, and asked them to take on the financial issues of our television company. I did it because I don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” he told an Imedi interviewer on October 11.

Patarkatsishvili, thought to be the country’s richest man, has placed himself squarely in the middle of this month’s rapid political developments, publicizing his own ideological platform and announcing October 28 that he would finance the opposition coalition’s campaign to push for earlier parliamentary elections.

He did not immediately comment on the decision to hand over control of his shares, but had early promised, for the sake of his television company’s credibility, that he would do so if he entered politics

News Corp acquired a 49 percent stake in Imedi last year.

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