Multivision's Nazerali testifies about names and books
2015-04-16 20:29 ET - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell
The cross-examination of Multivision Communications Corp.'s Aly Nazerali continued on Thursday afternoon, with defence lawyer Roger McConchie questioning him about names, dates and books. The purpose of the material was not immediately clear, but some of it appeared to show links between Mr. Nazerali and notorious Canadian Irving Kott. One of the books also linked him with what Mr. McConchie quoted as "one of the world's largest bank frauds."
Mr. Nazerali's testimony is part of a defamation lawsuit he is pursuing against a website called Deep Capture, which purports to expose wrongdoing in the markets. The suit is over several chapters that appeared on the website in 2011 which Mr. Nazerali claims wrongfully accused him of being a drug dealer, terrorist, fraud artist and gangster, among other things. The defendants include Patrick Byrne, the short-selling conspiracy theorist who runs Overstock.com Inc. and Deep Capture. Also a defendant is journalist Mark Mitchell. The men contest the allegations and are fighting the case.
| | ALINAZERALI.COM | | Aly Nazerali |
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. McConchie introduced two books into evidence. The first was the 1988 publication Contrapreneurs by Dianne Francis. The portions of the book that Mr. McConchie referred to claimed that Mr. Nazerali was a virtual partner of Mr. Kott. (The association is one of the things that Mr. Nazerali complained of in his lawsuit. Mr. Kott was a notorious 1970s stock promoter who pleaded guilty to criminal charges and, according to the Deep Capture chapters, was involved in an Amersterdam boiler room.) Mr. McConchie did not spend much time on the book, but did establish that Mr. Nazerali had read it and had not included it in his list of documents for the trial.
Mr. McConchie also introduced a 1992 book called False Profits by Larry Gurwin and Peter Truell. The book was a history of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and described the firm as "one of the world's largest bank frauds." (One of Mr. Nazerali's complaints is that Deep Capture unfairly associated him with Bank of Credit and Commerce, or BCCI as it was known. Deep Capture said he was an important figure at the bank, a "massive criminal enterprise that did business with everyone from La Cosa Nostra and the Russian Mafia to Colombian drug cartels.") As with the prior book, Mr. McConchie established that Mr. Nazerali had a copy and that he had read it. Mr. Nazerali also testified that he was simply an innocent customer of BCCI, and like many others lost money when the bank went out of business.
Parts of Mr. McConchie's cross-examination (much of which consisted of verifying a pretrial interview) hinted at more links to Mr. Kott. In one line of questioning, Mr. McConchie established that Mr. Nazerali and Mr. Kott both knew a man named Tony Rushford. Mr. Nazerali confirmed that he had met Mr. Rushford socially in the United Kingdom in 1983 or 1984. He said a man named Graham Kelly had introduced them. Mr. Nazerali said he was not sure how Mr. Kott and Mr. Rushford knew each other or when they had met.
Other portions of the cross-examination established how Mr. Nazerali knew many other people. These included Irving DeVoe, a Montreal scientist who was behind a public company called DeVoe Holbein International, and Charles Backer-Dirks, who founded a public company called City Clok NV. Mr. Nazerali testified that he met the men because First Commerce Securities, a Dutch firm that he helped run in the early 1980s, was making a market in those stocks.
The trial is scheduled to continue Friday. |
