Forum organiser ordered to pay €6,000 in libel damages over two emails

A former editor of two business magazines, tasked with the organisation of a networking forum at Smart City four years ago, was ordered to pay €6,000 in libel damages to a guest speaker who was turned away and branded a ‘persona non grata’. Martin Vella, former editor of Property and Life as well as the Economic Update magazines, was targeted by two libel suits filed by Anthony Micallef, owner of a private business dealing in office equipment and former president of the Maltese Libyan Chamber of Commerce. Relations between the two had turned sour note when Mr Vella had allegedly backtracked on the purchase of a printer from Mr Micallef’s company. The latter had allegedly vowed to take revenge which, he apparently did by refusing to pay for an interview and adverts published in the Economic Update, claiming the content had not been up to scratch. With these unresolved issues between the two, Mr Vella, when tasked by the Tunisian Embassy in Malta to organize the ‘Malta-Tunisia-Libya B2B Networking Forum 2014’, had sought to get even by ensuring that Mr Micallef would be struck off the speakers’ list. For this reason, days before the official inauguration of the event, Mr Vella had...