Judgment was handed down by Mrs Justice Steyn on 23 August 2024 following a trial of preliminary issues of whether parts of an article published on the OCCRP’s website (“The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project”) are protected by qualified privilege pursuant to s 15 of the Defamation Act 1996 and of the issue of meaning.
The Claimant, Dr Ashti Hawrami, served as the Minister of Natural Resources in the newly formed Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (“the KRG”) from May 2006 until July 2019 and then as the Assistant Prime Minister for Energy Affairs in the KRG until early 2022. He has brought defamation proceedings against the Defendants, Journalism Development Network Inc, which is the publisher of the OCCRP website, and two journalists, for a website publication entitled “The Rise and Fall of a US Oilman” which contained references to Dr Hawrami. The Defence disputed the defamatory meanings complained of by Dr Hawrami, denied that the publication was defamatory of him and relied, in the alternative, upon statutory qualified privilege as a fair and accurate report of the judgment and proceedings in a High Court commercial case Excalibur Ventures LLC v Texas Keystone Inc & Ors and public interest pursuant to s 4 of the Defamation Act 2013. Master Dagnall directed the trial of the preliminary issues, which was heard by Steyn J in June 2024.
The judge held that the article could not be defended as containing a fair and accurate report of the Excalibur case and entered judgment for Dr Hawrami upon the issue. She determined the natural and ordinary meanings of the website publication, as set out at [149] of her judgment; meanings which she decided were defamatory of Dr Hawrami at common law.
There remains for determination in due course the Defendants’ public interest defence under s 4 of the 2013 Act.
5RB’s Adrienne Page KC and Tom Blackburn acted for Dr Hawrami, instructed by Carter-Ruck.
A full case report will be released in due course.
The judgment is available here.