Businessman Oleksandr Altman, who was named as a new investor by the newly appointed top managers of TVi channel, was an advisor of fuel and energy minister Yuriy Prodan, not an advisor of Yuriy Boiko, the press service of the latter has said.

"Altman was a freelance advisor of minister Prodan and was appointed to the post in June 2008," reads the report.

The press service of Vice Premier Yuriy Boiko also presented a copy of the relevant order issued on the basis of an application submitted by Altman.

On Tuesday, the press service of TVi reported that Artem Shevchenko had been appointed the new director general of the channel instead of Natalia Katerynchuk. The famous U.S. businessman Oleksandr Altman became a new investor of the channel.

"I've been a business-partner of Kagalovsky and [Vladimir] Gusinsky, who founded the channel. I was born in Ukraine, I believe that Ukraine is my native land and I'll do all I can to make sure our country becomes a member of the European Union," Altman said.

The owner of TVi channel Konstantin Kagalovsky has said that the television channel was illegally seized with the help of law-enforcement agencies.

According to the press service of TVi, Altman was born in Odesa in 1956. From 1979 to 1986 he was a researcher and graduate student of the Science Academy of the Soviet Union. Then he worked as a technical director of Informinvest Company, one of the first joint ventures in the Soviet Union, which developed high technologies. Since 1990 he has lived in New York. He became a U.S. citizen and set up the firm Advanced Materials, the core business of which is developing high-tech materials for the nuclear energy sphere.