Satabank owner sues Manuel Delia in Bulgaria
The Bulgarian co-owner of Satabank has sued blogger Manuel Delia in his native Bulgaria, seeking damages for a post he uploaded in October 2018.
In a post uploaded on Saturday, Mr Delia said that he had been named in a case filed by Christo Georgiev in Varna, Bulgaria.
He described the court case as a SLAPP suit. SLAPP - strategic lawsuits against public participation – are cases filed in overseas courts which seek to silence journalists by making it too expensive for them to defend themselves in court.
The complaint cites an October 2018 blog post in which Mr Delia said that Mr Georgiev was facing investigations "by various police forces around the world while being sheltered here in Malta by Joseph Muscat’s government”.
In that blog post, Mr Delia wrote that he regretted having retracted a separate post about Satabank, after being threatened with legal action in the UK by the bank's lawyers.
Satabank was ordered to stop taking client deposits that month after an investigation by financial crime authorities identified several shortcomings in the bank’s anti-money laundering procedures.
The bank was subsequently fined €3 million for money laundering breaches.
Although...