RIGA — On Sunday Diena board chairman Aleksandrs Tralmaks resigned from his position with little fanfare, leaving Riga for London and declining comment requests from the media.
Tralmaks presided over the purchase of the company from Swedish media giant Bonnier by a then-mystery investor, which was later revealed to be the Rowland family from England. The purchase under an unknown ownership arrangement prompted a mass staff walkout.
The company owns both the Diena and Diena Bizness daily newspapers, arguably Latvia’s most influential. For many Diena had represented a beacon of integrity in country known for unscrupulous journalism. Diena also set itself apart by fighting for things like rights of sexual minorities, a subject most dailies in Latvia wouldn’t dare go near.
The resignation comes as Diena is under increasing heat for reporting from Latvian telecommunication companies LNT and Lattelecom, who threatened legal action against the newspaper due to what they call misinformation about them in a July 5 article about the “Digitālgeita” scandal.
Diena stood by its reporting, though.
“I want to see concretely, which sentence, which word article is wrong and then talk further,” Diena’s head editor Gunta Bojāra wrote in a statement.
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