Multivision's Nazerali wins order against U.S. site
2011-10-21 20:46 ET - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell
Vancouver promoter Altaf Nazerali has won a court order that has at least temporarily shut down the deepcapture.com website. He complained that the site, which purports to expose stock market wrongdoing, posted material portraying him as a criminal and a fraud artist. The order, handed down in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Wednesday, Oct. 19, instructs the site's host to block access to any material referring to Mr. Nazerali and prohibits the domain's registrar from allowing a transfer of the domain.
While it is not clear how much of deepcapture.com directly referred to Mr. Nazerali, attempts to access any part of the site only returned a blank screen on Friday. The order was granted without any prior notice to deepcapture.com. Unless extended, it remains in effect until Dec. 2, 2011.
Nazerali's claim
The order came the same day that Mr. Nazerali filed a notice of claim against the site and its operators. He claimed that deepcapture.com linked him with Mafia figures and an associate of Osama bin Laden, among others. The defendants included naked short-selling conspiracist Patrick Byrne, who is the publisher of the site. (Mr. Byrne is also the chief executive officer of Internet retailer Overstock.com Inc.) Also a defendant was Illinois resident Mark Mitchell, who the suit identified as the author of much of the material that Mr. Nazerali complained of.
According to the suit, deepcapture.com posted the defamatory material in a series of chapters. One, dated July, 2011, stated that Mr. Nazerali was an important figure at Bank of Credit and Commerce International, "the massive criminal enterprise that did business with everyone from La Cosa Nostra and the Russian Mafia to Colombian drug cartels." His business partners, as listed in the passage, included Mufti al Abbar, "chief market manipulator for Muammar Qadaffi," and "an impressive number of securities traders who are also narco-traffickers (such as Paul Combs, until Combs was whacked by Nazerali's mobster friend Egor Chernov)."
Another chapter claimed that Mr. Nazerali's associates included Yasin al Qadi, "Osama bin Laden's favorite financier." It also linked with other Middle Eastern figures. "Nazerali, recall, has working relationships with ... members of Al Qaeda's Golden Chain, the regime in Iran, Pakistan's ISI, the chief of Saudi intelligence, the ruler of Dubai, the royals of Abu Dhabi, La Cosa Nostra, the Russian Mafia, and others in the Milken network."
Of the 21 chapters that Mr. Mitchell created, all but five referred to Mr. Nazerali. According to the suit, they meant that he is a criminal, arms dealer, drug dealer, terrorist, fraud artist, gangster, mobster and member of the Mafia. He is also dishonest, dangerous and not to be trusted.
In addition to Mr. Byrne and Mr. Mitchell, the suit named as defendants Deep Capture LLC, which operates the site, and an affiliated company, High Plains Investments LLC. Also named were the site's registrar, GoDaddy Inc., and its host, NoZone Inc. Other defendants were search provider Google Inc. and its Canadian subsidiary, which publishes a list of links to the defamatory statements along with brief quotes.
Mr. Nazerali is seeking a permanent injunction barring the defendants from defaming him. He is also seeking general, special, punitive and aggravated damages against Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Byrne, Deep Capture and High Plains. Vancouver lawyer Dan Burnett of Owen Bird Law Corp. filed the suit on Mr. Nazerali's behalf.
None of the defendants have responded to the suit.
While Mr. Nazerali has had roles with many junior companies, his only current role is as the president of Multivision Communications Corp., a mostly inactive TSX Venture Exchange listing.
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