3963 days ago
On 29th January the Daily Telegraph ran a piece suggesting that my pal Brokerman Dan was short of Sefton Resources (SER) and that is why he was writing bearish pieces. The source of that story which was untrue was Alex Walters who acts for Sefton as its PR man. The journalist at the Telegraph has contemporaneous notes of the conversation. The paper has now withdrawn the article and apologised to Dan for its role in this i.e. being duped.
On February 25th Sefton announced that it was suing myself and Dan for legal action but also that it had received legal advice that we had breached the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 and that it had reported us to the FSA. Dan obtained the letter sent by Sefton’s lawyers Pinsent Masons on 14 January using a FOI request. It took him two minutes to respond and the FCA has now confirmed to Dan that the matter is closed – he has done nothing wrong. It was a spurious and malicious complaint against him (and also me).
I have also explained to the FSA (and to Pinsent Masons) why the compliant was spurious and frankly anyone with a basic understanding of the FSMA would know why it was spurious. As such, to suggest that we had breached the FSMA in a public release was damaging and defamatory. Sefton may regard it as part of a legitimate dirty tricks campaign but I am not sure anyone else would.
Sefton Resources and its agent (Alex Walters) have clearly committed not one but two acts of libel against Dan (also myself). I hope that Sefton will issue an RNS apologising in full to myself and Dan and I’d happily drop the matter there. But I am aware that Daniel is now considering suing Sefton for libel should an apology not be forthcoming.
