The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium requested transparency from BC Partners and United Group regarding any proposed governance models or safeguards affecting editorial independence of the remaining independent media outlets in Serbia, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom said on Monday.

“MFRR calls on President Vucic to stop making humiliating and discrediting statements against United Media journalists, which fuel hatred towards media professionals who are threatened daily. We call for urgent prosecution of the threats, as delays increase the risk to journalists’ safety,” the social media post said.

The post said that any interference by the Serbian authorities in the functioning of the independent media would be incompatible with European values and standards. It recalled that the MFRR consortium raised serious concerns regarding the future of the United Group in a letter to BC Partners, “which went alarmingly unanswered” in July.

In a news report last week, N1 noted that when the decision to sell the cable operator SBB and the sports rights of Sport Klub was announced to the public at the beginning of the year, BC Partners, which has a majority stake in several media outlets in Serbia and the region, also announced that one of the next plans was to withdraw from countries that are not members of the European Union – which means Serbia as well.

And that would sound logical according to the business logic of investment funds, which usually sell their investments after five-year period.

However, when a management offer to buy out the media arrived, BC Partners said “no”.

“I think it is more than obvious that this is not a company purchase to develop the media business, but quite the opposite – a good price was obtained to hinder that media business and thus end some political stories,” deems Nenad Gujanicic of the brokerage firm “Momentum”.

The kind of political discourse we are talking about was most clearly demonstrated in a recording of a telephone conversation between United Group CEO Stan Miller and Telekom Serbia CEO Vladimir Lucic.

It reveals that the removal of United Media CEO Aleksandra Subotic was requested by the president himself, but that Miller asked for a little more time in order to weaken the company he runs.

“What is the essence of the problem here is the answer that they don’t want to sell it. The investment fund is buying it to repack and sell it. If they don’t want to do that now, then we can expect that there will be some more repacking and some more organizational changes, but that has nothing to do with business. It seems to me that it has much more to do with something else, and that is with the situation in Serbia, and the situation on the media landscape,” according to Radar editor Milan Culibrk.

Telekom Serbia, headed by Vladimir Lucic, also plays an important role in this .

“We see that informally this company has been tasked with controlling the media field and that there is a fine line where some public interests are violated, or some actions are initiated in the interests of the party in power,” stressed Gujanicic.

In the interest of the parties and presidents who control most of the media landscape, and who do not choose ways to eliminate media outlets that they cannot influence and the media outlets that report critically.

“Because an investment fund, whose business logic is – buy cheap, do something, repack, sell more expensively and make money on it. When it doesn’t want to sell, then it’s obviously not just a business option, there are many other options,” Culibrk pointed out.

Gujanicic believes it is more than obvious that this is some kind of tied trading and that the primary motive for this purchase, and probably the price itself, is not this theoretical concept, but rather some other factors.

“That is, they committed to some other actions that they of course did not publicly disclose, for the simple reason that it is not popular and carries some consequences for their investors,” he said.

It is their shareholders, who have a capital of 50 billion dollars, who could stand in the way of a deal with the government that could damage their international reputation.

The Radar editor drew a parallel with the General Staff complex case, where, faced with violations of the law by the highest state officials, objection from citizens and the professional community, the investment fund of the US president’s son-in-law withdrew from the investment.