German media reported on the unofficial salaries of employees of TV channel owned by Poroshenko
Frankfurter Allgemeine, a German newspaper, published an article about the salaries of Channel 5 employees, indicating that they were partially received off the books. Channel 5 is owned by the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.
Seven employees of Channel 5 are allegedly paid in two parts. The first part of the salary is official; it is often equal to the statutory minimum wage. But most of the salary was paid to them informally. The German newspaper failed to get any comments on this matter from the management of Channel 5.
The newspaper also names two out of the seven employees who claim that they are paid unofficially. They are Oxana Gryzenko and Xenia Novikova. The others asked for their names not to be published.
A DW correspondent already wrote about Channel 5’s "under-the-table" salaries back in October 2015. At that time it was reported that the first employee to state this publicly was Roman Suhan, a journalist. He reported that during the hiring process, journalists received two different cards: one for the official part of the salary, and the other card for the undocumented part of it.
Journalist Khrystyna Bondarenko also complained about other problems with their employer. According to her, the management of the channel practiced a system of fines, which were subtracted from the informal part of the salary, so it is impossible to prove anything.