Latvia’s Regional Administrative Court has ruled against the resumption of the broadcasting of PBK Lithuania and PBK Estonia in the country.
It has also rejected a request by PBK to suspend a decision by the Latvian regulator NEPLP to revoke the licences of the First Baltic Channel Lithuania and First Baltic Channel Estonia
According to NEPLP, in April it decided to revoke the licences of the channels as their real owned Oleg Solodov had been punished for committing a criminal offence against the state in breach of sanctions by international organisations.
It adds PBK applied to the Administrative District Court to suspend the NEPLP decision by granting temporary protection. The request to suspend the decision was rejected. An ancillary complaint was lodged against this court decision, but the Regional Administrative Court also decided to reject the application for interim protection, leaving the decision of the court of first instance unchanged. The decision of the Regional Administrative Court is not subject to appeal and shall take effect at the time of its adoption.
Ivars Aboli?s, chairman of NEPLP, said: “This means that these channels will not return to the Latvian information space”.
NEPLP concludes by saying that proceedings in other cases related to the exclusion of channels from the Latvian information space are ongoing.
