Ro
En
Рy
Thus, in order to be able to carry out its activity, the SB currently waits for the broadcasting regulating authority to appoint at least the sixth member. In its turn, the Broadcasting Council (BC) announced a call for filling only three vacant positions out of those four, because the law provides that the candidates for 3 positions of SB members shall be publicly invited to participate in the competition. Note that after the entry into force of the new Audiovisual Media Services Code, the SB members are now appointed by the BC instead of the Parliament.
By its Decision of 28 January 2018, the BC announced the contest to select three members of the SB. However, only 3 people submitted the participation files before the deadline of 4 March: Grigore Chiperi, Diana Dicusari and Tatiana Munteanu. In this situation, the SB President deemed it appropriate to extend the contest until 25 March.
On 26 March, the BC announced two more candidates for this contest – Daniela Mitelea and Violeta Cojocaru. Thus, 5 people will run for vacant positions in the SB.
The items that were on the SB agenda in 2019
According to the law, the Supervisory Board operates through the public meetings of at least 1/3 of its members, convened on the SB President’s initiative or at the request of the Executive Director. Supervisory Board is convened whenever necessary, but not less frequently than once a month.
Although the announcements about topics of 2019 meetings are published on the Supervisory Board website, the said website lacks information on the approved decisions and minutes of the meetings. The last decisions accompanied by minutes of the meetings are dated December 2018, given that the SB must ensure transparency of its activities.
Moreover, the SB members met twice in January, 5 times in February and twice – in March. For comparison, SB members met 4 times in November and 3 times in December in 2018, before the new Code was approved.
On 1 March, SB members had a meeting with Graham Dixon, head of Euroradio at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) planned on their agenda. On 26 February, SB members discussed the Briefing Note on reflecting the election campaign for the parliamentary elections of 24 February 2019, on 22 February – Briefing Note on the new web portal of ‘TELERADIO-MOLDOVA’ Company and writing-off of obsolete assets, reported in fixed assets. On 19 February discussions targeted the development and approval of the new Supervisory Board regulation and abrogation of certain Council of Observers’ decisions, on 12 February regulation was discussed as well, on 7 February the activity of the Marketing and Sales service in 2019 and approval of the Regulation on Organisation and Operation of the Management Committee within the NPAI ‘Teleradio-Moldova’ Company were discussed.
On 22 January, the agenda of SB members included information about the level of readiness of NPAI ‘Teleradio-Moldova’ Company to reflect the election campaign for the parliamentary elections and consultative referendum of 24 February 2019, approval of the staff roster for 2019 and the 2019 sales policy of the NPAI ‘Teleradio-Moldova’ Company.
Irregularities found by the Court of Accounts
Note that the Court of Accounts stated in its Report on the Financial Audit of Teleradio-Moldova for 2016 reporting year, published in 2018, that the Council of Observers did not exercise its duties fully and timely. The audit evidence showed that the CO did not develop and publish the 2016 annual report with rigorous recommendations on appraisal of Company’s performance and its management. ‘Accordingly, due to the Founder’s lack of knowledge about the efficient management of state property, he did not take any necessary decisions to remedy the financial situation’, – the Court of Accounts report states.
Also, the CO approved the company’s budget with delay in 2016, and another identified gap was that in 2016 ‘Teleradio-Moldova’ operated without a medium-term and long-term development strategy. Thus, necessary financial resources, program budgeting and other operational activities were not estimated in correlation with the strategic development policies.
Income of the Board members
According to the new Code, the president and the secretary of the CO are considered employees of ‘Teleradio-Moldova’, and monthly salary of the president of the Supervisory Board is equal to 90% of monthly salary of the Broadcasting Council Chair. In turn, the salary of the CO secretary amounts to 90% of the monthly salary of the Supervisory Board President.
According to the declaration of income of Dragos Vicol, the acting Chair of the BC, he had the salary income of MDL 156,912.48 in 2018, or approximately MDL 13,076.04 per month. If his salary remains the same this year, then 90% will amount to about MDL11,768 – the approximate salary of the CO President.
According to the 2017 declaration of income of Nicolae Spataru, he earned MDL 121,116.06 within the Supervisory Board, or about MDL 10,093 per month.
At the same time, according to the law, other CO members receive a monthly allowance of 10% of the monthly salary of the Supervisory Board President for participation in each meeting and, when appropriate, are reimbursed the transportation and accommodation costs.
Thus, according to the calculations, a SB member should receive about MDL1,176 per meeting.
When asked about the amount of the SB members’ allowances, Nicolae Spataru told us that he could not provide us this information and added that... he still did not know what salary he would have.
Galina Bizu, senior specialist of the TRM Accounting Service, told Media-azi.md that the members with expired mandates have already received their January, February and March salaries, and that two meetings were held in the last month – on 1 and 4 March.
What is SB
According to the Audiovisual Media Services Code, the Supervisory Board is responsible for ‘the activity of the national media service provider in order to implement the Terms of Reference and, where appropriate, it intervenes with regulatory decisions, approves the maximum limit of bank loans which the Executive Director may request without the approval of the Supervisory Board, approves the proposals for amending the budget of the national public service provider, maintains the register of public appeals, examines petitions and notifications from population and, where appropriate, prescribes to the Executive Director mandatory measures to redress situation, submits the annual activity report to the Broadcasting Council until 1 February of the year following the reporting year and ensures transparency of its activities’.
The Board consists of nine members – public figures with professional qualifications in journalism, law, public relations, international relations, culture, cinema, financial management and commercial enterprise management, information and communication technologies, academic activity, media, and engineering.
At least three representatives of the administrative-territorial units, other than Chisinau municipality, are appointed to the Supervisory Board.
