From Golem XIV:
Making the truth illegal
For the last couple of months I have been working on a long story on Cyprus, Money laundering and the Magnitsky case for ThompsonReuters. I was approached by one of their editors to write a story after he had read a story I had written back in August on HSBC and Money Laundering.
The article I have been writing eventually reached 8000 words and contained a great deal of detail which was highly embarrasing to a great many people, and institutions. Last night Reuters killed the story.
One of those institutions I named in the story was the very large and politically powerful Austrian bank Raiffeisen. Raiffeisen are bankers to the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and also own a great many of the serious, political magazines in Austria.I don't know much about Raiffeisen, I'm told they look east.
Raiffeisen was shown a small extract from the article in order for them to have the right of reply. They took great exception to what I had written and sent me an email in which they denied all allegations, citing an investigation done by the Austrian Financial Regulator which gave them a clean bill of health, and threatend legal action and persuit for damages against me and Reuters. I forwarded this to my editor.
Last night, during dinner, I was called by the General Legal Counsel for the whole of ThompsonReuters in NY. That office, I was told, had received communications from Raiffeisen wondering who I was. This morning I was told the whole matter and my article had been referred all the way to Reuters Head of Ethics and it had been decided that Reuters would now not publish the story....MORE
