Russia's new media outlet Sputnik has stopped broadcasting in Georgia only a week after it started.
And R Radio, the local radio company who leased its frequency to Sputnik, was caught violating terms and conditions of its license.
Sputnik Georgia stopped broadcasting following recent local media reports that questioned its legality to broadcast.
Editor-in-chief of Sputnik Georgia Anton Laskhishvili said today that he did not know much about what was going on as he was only responsible about the content of the program but "apparently, R Radio had unilaterally abolished the contract” with Sputnik.
Sputnik is a new large-scale media brand of Russia Today – a state owned news agency – which aimed "to bring a different perspective to the global audience tired of the aggressive promotion of a unipolar world”. However, some assessed it as "yet another compliant outlet to trumpet the Kremlin line".
Privately owned R Radio, which currently broadcast in Tbilisi under the name Radio Monte Carlo, allocated four hours a day to broadcast Sputnik’s programs. The new program was on air for about a week before it was removed from local airwaves.
R Radio was asked to publically release details of its agreement with Russia Today about the new radio campaign but a radio administration staff member said they only had a "verbal agreement”.
Meanwhile it has been revealed R Radio director Ketevan Kereselidze had connections with Georgia’s main opposition political party United National Movement (UNM). She was on the list of UNM's financial contributors.
According to a document published on the official website of the State Audit Office of Georgia, Kereselidze contributed 30,000 GEL to UNM's election campaign on August 8, 2012.
Meanwhile, Georgian National Communication Commission (GNCC) said it found violations of license terms and conditions after it recently began inspecting R Radio.
R Radio has a common license for broadcasting in Tbilisi on FM 101.4 valid until 2022. The common license for broadcasting includes a duty to broadcast news programs.
Under Georgian Broadcasting Laws, all broadcasters should fact-check their content and timely fix mistakes. Hence, local non-governmental organisations questioned R Radio’s ability to provide quality information if it was retranslating content from another company on its owned frequency.
GNCC said even though they started checking R Radio because of controversial reports spread in Georgian media, the violations they found were not related with Sputnik.
They said more details about the violations would be revealed at the Commission’s next meeting on Thursday.
Meanwhile Russia Today planned to take Sputnik globally. In 2015 Sputnik planned to broadcast in 30 languages with over 800 hours of radio programming daily, covering more than 130 cities in 34 countries, including Ukraine and Moldova.
In addition, Sputnik also announced it planned to broadcast in Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions in the local languages.
According to Sputniknews.com, Sputnik had multimedia centres in London, Washington, D.C., New Delhi, Cairo, Montevideo, Beijing, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Paris, Buenos Aires, Belgrade, Helsinki, Minsk, Kiev, Tashkent, Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Sukhumi, Tskhinvali, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku and Chisinau, and had anywhere from 30 to 100 staff who were all local professionals.