This Friday, the BE coordinator said that the Attorney General’s Office “must investigate” the purchase of communications group Global Media Group (GMG) by an investment fund, saying that “there are things that are the subject of police attention.”
In Porto, on the sidelines of a visit to the editorial offices of Jornal de Notícias and O Jogo, two GMG publications threatened with dismissal and withholding of salaries, Mariana Mortagua expressed the opinion that the state should take over “temporary ownership” of GMG until a solution is found . it is necessary to find something that provides “suitability conditions”.
“I would even risk saying that the Prosecutor General’s Office should investigate this matter, because in this whole business with GMG, in the transfer of property, with this fund, there are contours that no one knows about, which are a police matter,” he said. said the leader of the bloc.
According to the deputy of the Assembly of the Republic, the regulator “cannot wash its hands” and “owes the country much more decisive action and investigation.”
“The funds themselves say that they do not come to buy media (OCS) to make money, so the question is what do they come to do? What is an investment fund that we don’t know what it is, we don’t know who is in charge and for what purpose is it going to force Portugal to buy one of the largest media groups by directly interfering in the affairs of TSF and JN,” he asks.
According to Mariana Mortagua, GMG is “under attack”, as are the journalists of the group’s various publications, and the state “plays a role” in protecting journalism, especially in protecting the group’s journalists.
“In the short term, the state must find a way to stabilize the ownership of GMG, to stabilize the quality of journalism that is protected,” he emphasized.
“Temporary state ownership can provide this until a private shareholder or cooperative is found that provides suitable conditions,” he said.
The bloc leader even compared the purchase of the bank with the purchase of GMG: “A fund that no one knows about comes and buys one of the largest Portuguese banks. Do we think this is reasonable? There are eligibility rules and not everyone can come and buy a financial institution. If this applies to a bank, then even more so it should apply to a media organization,” he explained.
Mariana Mortagua also stated that this is not a partisan issue, since “all parties that are part of democracy must defend the conditions for the functioning of democracy, and one of the conditions for the functioning of democracy is a free media.”
On December 6, in an internal statement, GMG’s executive committee, led by José Paulo Fafe, announced that it would urgently negotiate layoffs with 150 to 200 workers and embark on a restructuring it said was necessary to prevent it from “going further than was predicted by the group.” bankruptcy”.
As of today, GMG employees with green checks have yet to receive their October pay and Christmas bonuses have yet to be paid.
“Those people [os colaboradores a recibo verde] they do not receive a payment, they have no guarantee when they receive the October payment (…) we cannot understand how a fund, how someone buys it, enters into the capital of a company and after three months is not able to guarantee something so something as basic as paying wages,” said JN trade union delegate Augusto Correia on the sidelines of BE’s visit.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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