Ocean Plaza staff says journalists needed "accreditation" to work inside, and that is why they were not allowed in

In the shopping and entertainment mall ‘Ocean Plaza’, the staff says that the security guards did not let the journalists enter "as they needed accreditation to do that". The junior PR consultant Veronika Neroda told this to the journalists. The mall’s press service denies information that journalists encountered resistance in taking footage and reports inside the mall and claim that there is a procedure for permitting journalists work inside the mall. The journalists were interested in the circumstances of fire in ‘Ocean Plaza’ that took place before, and poor organization of evacuation.

The IMI media lawyer Maksym Ratushnyi comments that in this case internal permits (not "accreditation") and other similar internal procedures cannot be used as an excuse by the ‘Ocean Plaza’ administration to dodge giving the commentary to the press, as the issue of evacuation during fire is of high importance for the society, and for such cases, internal procedures for getting permits for recording are superseded.