Media companies facing more than R850m in legal claims
By Edward West
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Combus Kellermann, the owner of the now defunct Belvedere Holdings, has applied to the high court to increase his defamation claim against several media companies from R30 million to more than R850m.
In an interview with Business Report, Kellermann claimed that media companies had from 2017 wrongfully reported that his company was a ponzi scam and this had allegedly caused his operations to go bust.
“The campaign against me started on March 23, 2015 with an article in BizNews, written by Alec Hogg, which reported that I had ‘been fingered as a mastermind behind a global ponzi scheme run out of Mauritius ,” said Kellermann.
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He also wants to increase his claims for damages from various media outlets from R30m to R900m. 00:01
Alec Hogg has had criminal defamation charges filed against him. Image: Moneyweb
Cobus Kellermann has filed criminal defamation charges against Alec Hogg, editor and owner of BizNews, following the publication of a series of allegedly defamatory articles in 2015, written by Hogg and carried on Hogg’s website BizNews and Fin24.
These articles labelled Kellermann and his partner David Cosgrove as criminals and the kingpins behind the so-called Belvedere scheme, which was labelled a “blatantly fraudulent Ponzi scheme” of between R10 billion and R200 billion.