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At the same time, Jardan will act as administrator until all contracts signed in 2019 expire. The media manager said that the site requires investments for development, which he does not have, fact on which this decision was based. ‘It has been five intense years in which we have succeed to develop UNIMEDIA on our own and practically without the support of international donors. A new stage comes now. I believe and I am sure that everything will be much better,’ said Cristian Jardan, according to Unimedia.
Olesea Banari, in her turn, stated she would invest in the quality of journalistic products and promised many ‘surprises’. ‘We will continue to develop the first news site in the Republic of Moldova, so that UNIMEDIA.INFO will inform the readers correctly, impartially and on time,’ is mentioned in a statement made by Olesea Banari.
Thursday, 10 October, Mold-street wrote that the transaction value between Banari and Jardan is secret, but that ‘Miraza’ SRL has a share capital of 5.400 lei. Jardan refused to comment on the quoted source and to explain the decision to sell the company and media outlet.
According to Mold-street.md, the new owner, Olesea Banari (Bolboceanu), is the wife of the businessman Sergiu Banari and previously worked in the media, owning and managing the portal stireazilei.md in 2009-2011.
Unimedia.info was launched in 2005 by Dumitru Ciorici, Tudor Darie and brothers Vasile and Sergiu Galusca, all four associates at the company ‘Interact Media’ SRL and ‘New Media Grup’ SRL. Anticorupție.md wrote that the portal became popular especially after the protests of April 2009, due to its live coverage of those events.
Publika TV, led at that time by Dumitru Tira (now the director of ‘Realitatea’ Press Group) announced, in December 2009, its intention to take over the majority stake of the company that managed Unimedia. However, the Unimedia-Publika TV partnership did not last long, ending three years later in court. At the end of 2014, ‘Interact Media’ and ‘Miraza’ announced the signing a sale and purchase contract of the UNIMEDIA news portal, but the price of the transaction was not made public, although were mentioned impressive figures. Several voices claimed that actually, the site passed under the control of the former Prime Minister Vlad Filat, a fact denied by the owners.
