Francisco Pedro Balseman (President of Grupo Impresa, owner of SIC) accuses Mario Ferreira (majority shareholder of Media Capital group, owner of TVI) of not appreciating and not thinking about the freedom and independence of an editorial project. The attack by the son of Francisco Pinto Balcemán (founder of Grupo Impresa) was carried out this Saturday in the newspaper Público (which mistakenly identified in the paper that the article was written by Francisco Pinto Balsemán himself) for three days. after Mario Ferreira gave an interview to that newspaper in which he questioned the fact that the SIC in a “very convenient” way allowed commentator Ana Gómez to “repeate to the point of exhaustion” against him “false accusations without evidence”. In the author’s article “Independence as Trump”, in which he considers the statements of Mario Ferreira “false, slanderous and offensive”, Francisco Pedro Balseman does not spare the businessman. “From the very beginning, it is clear from the words of Mario Ferreira that a shareholder or manager of a TV channel can give orders to a free and independent commentator,” he wrote. “At Impresa, we value freedom and independence more than Mario Ferreira can apparently imagine.” And he even asks: “I don’t know if this will happen on TVI.” The Impresa CEO also reminds Mario Ferreira that “when his company Douro Azul was targeted for tax fraud and money laundering, it was the SIC who invited him to an interview where he was able to expose his entire defense and plead not guilty.” And he ends: “The judicial investigation against Mario Ferreira concerns only Mario Ferreira.”