The financial magazine has threatened to sue Business Day and M&G for publishing allegations of unethical behaviour about its owner, reports Mungo Soggot
THE battle of the media industry’s financial gurus intensified this week as Finance Week threatened legal action against its rival Business Day and vowed to publish a personal attack on its editor Jim Jones.
Finance Week’s broadside follows Business Day’s publication last week of allegations of unethical behaviour by David Gleason, Finance Week’s new owner and star columnist.
Business Day published excerpts of statements signed by top executives from Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) in which they suggested Gleason had tried to extort the bank two years ago when he was writing for the Financial Mail. Both Business Day and the Financial Mail are part of the Times Media Limited (TML) group.
Gleason, who bought Finance Week last year, allegedly offered to stop writing a string of critical articles about RMB if the bank favoured mining house Randgold in a particular mining deal. Gleason has denied the allegations.
The statements were published last week in the Mail & Guardian, which is also being sued for defamation. Finance Week is being advised by media law expert advocate Gilbert Marcus, SC.
Finance Week said it would resurrect the tale that Jim Jones was once supplied with illegally taped telephone conversations of former Sage chief Louis Shill, who later became a National Party housing minister. It also alleges that Jones once looked through confidential documents belonging to former Financial Mail editor Stephen Mulholland.
Finance Week editor Nigel Bruce, who resigned as editor of the Financial Mail at the end of last year and followed Gleason, accuses Business Day of having “no scruples” for publishing the confidential documents two years later. The documents were found in Bruce’s former office at TML’s Rosebank headquarters.
Bruce told the M&G this week that the dispute boiled down to RMB’s word against Gleason’s. “He [Gleason] has conistently denied it, and it is really his word against theirs. I have never had any reason to doubt his [Gleason’s] integrity.”
He surmises that both RMB senior executives who accused Gleason – managing director Paul Harris and Wendy Lucas-Bull, who also heads Business Against Crime – “misinterpreted” Gleason on two separate occasions.
Bruce says: “I do not wish to call their integrity into doubt, but they were calling the integrity of one of my colleagues into doubt. They [the bank] would not concede any possibility of misinterpretation.”
Bruce said the bank had a motive to make the allegation as Gleason had written the critical articles about it. Gleason, however, had no motive to ask the bank to favour Randgold. Gleason’s articles described RMB’s role in the R162-million financing loss of the Umgeni Water Board.
Bruce says that when RMB managing director Paul Harris originally demanded that he sack Gleason, he said he would do no such thing until “…you can explain why he (Gleason) has done this…”
Bruce says: “I took the allegations very seriously, but nothing could ever be tied down … It was not my place to investigate a possible motive when the accusers could not even suggest one.”
At the time RMB declined his invitation to sue the Financial Mail for defamation or charge Gleason with extortion.
Bruce and Gleason have refused to confirm or deny rumours that certain Randgold directors helped fund Gleason’s take over of Finance Week last year from Lynne Hill, wife of Oliver Hill, the alleged fraudster facing extradition from Britain. But he says there was “no question” Gleason had business dealings prior to joining the Financial Mail with certain Randgold board members.
Bruce concedes that Gleason has written some favourable articles on Randgold but says: “All his arguments have been structured arguments and logical arguments. Where there is illogicality we will be discredited.”
Bruce says he was particularly upset by the M&G’s publication of a photograph portraying Gleason in a BMW with the caption: “Gleason in his BMW 850i that was previously owned by Randgold boss Brett Kebble.”
Bruce stresses that the BMW was bought through a dealer for “fair value”, adding that Gleason has decided to sell the car because it is “clearly bad luck”.
Bruce says his co-operation with the M&Gthis week does not rule out legal action, as last week’s defamatory allegations have been repeated. He insists the Gleason affair is not a matter of public interest.