Christo Georgiev’s company myPOS that sells portable point of sale terminals for contactless payments was advertised yesterday in a paid advertorial carried by local website Lovin Malta.
The feature, marked ‘sponsored’ by the website, promotes the services of Malta company 247Pay the local partner for Christo Georgiev’s MyPOS a company based in the UK.
Christo Georgiev was also the owner of Malta-licensed Satabank that had its operations shut down by order of the Malta Financial Services authority because of suspicions of systemic failure in combating money laundering. In fact a subsequent investigation confirmed this and Satabank was fined a record €3 million for its systematic failures. The bank never re-opened for business.
Christo Georgiev’s lawyers threatened this website with a law suit instituted by myPOS in the United Kingdom in order to protect that firm’s reputation. Georgiev has instead instituted a SLAPP defamation suit in his own name against this website and against Times of Malta in Bulgaria.
The Times of Malta and this website face considerable legal and judicial costs by this action taken by Christo Georgiev. The action has been noted in the Media Freedom monitor of the Council of Europe that records threats to independent journalism and democratic life in Europe.
While Christo Georgiev opened a SLAPP against two Maltese news organisations in Bulgaria, another one accepted payments to advertise his products.