TAX SERVICE DRIVING ‘KAMCHATKA KRAI’ NEWSPAPER TO BANKRUPTCY

The Kamchatka Regional Arbitration Court accepted a bankruptcy claim against the publisher of the Kamchatka Krai newspaper. The organization, the liquidation of which began on January 21, 2021, owed 1.7 million rubles to the tax authorities. The media failed to pay insurance premiums and personal income tax on time for several years. It is curious that the founder of the company is the regional ministry.

Experts note that the social projects of the regional government, which had no economic justification, led to the financial collapse of the publisher. For some categories of citizens living in Kamchatka, a free subscription had been previously established. The ability to distribute the print publication in hard-to-reach areas of the northern part of the peninsula turned out to be financially costly for the organization.

The company did not succeed in winning the tender for the publication of the ‘Official Gazette’ – their competitors were awarded the state contract.

For the last six to seven years, the company has been accompanied by the management leapfrog, which was organized by the press service of the former governor. Since 2014, the company has changed several directors. However, the media periodically found itself in debt, an example of which in 2015 was the refusal of several editorial offices at once to cooperate with the publishing house.

In 2020, the change of authorities took place in the region - Vladimir Solodov became the new governor. Under his power, the government decided to completely abandon the printed publications of the media. For almost half a year (from November 2020 to May 2021), the newspaper was not published. This period was quite enough for key journalists to leave the organization.

The small number of remaining employees had to work on two printed publications at once.

According to the Kamchatka-inform, the regional authorities plan to merge the editorial office of the liquidated organization with the Kammedia information and publishing center, which receives annual funding of more than 32 million rubles from the budget of the Kamchatka Territory. A team of the few remaining journalists (seven people) can be employed by Kammedia.

Earlier, the employees of the liquidated analytical center (ANO ‘KIAС’) found a new place of work there. In Kamchatka, Kammedia was called the ‘factory of network trolls’.