A Co Louth man who claims to be a business associate of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds has alleged before the High Court that he has been defamed in a letter.
He said that the letter in question wrongly and scandalously suggested that he had moved money at the direction of a man jailed for laundering money for Colombian drug lords.
Mr John O'Carroll, of Crowe Street, Dundalk, who describes himself as a businessman dealing with arbitrage, commodities and corporate finance, has taken proceedings against the Dow Jones Corporation (DJC), Barron's journal, which is published by the DJC, and Mr William Alpert, a senior editor of Barron's.
The defendants are seeking to set aside an order of the High Court of February 20th last permitting Mr O'Carroll to serve proceedings outside the jurisdiction on the defendants.
The application is being heard by Mr Justice Murphy.
In an affidavit, Mr O'Carroll said Mr Alpert wrote a letter to Mr Reynolds last January concerning an article that Barron's - which covers stories of interest to investors in securities - was about to publish. The letter was sent to Mr Reynolds in his capacity as chairman of Life Energy Technology Holdings Inc (LETH), a publicly traded company with a New York address.
Mr O'Carroll said he was a business associate of Mr Reynolds' and that the letter contained inaccuracies concerning him.
He was particularly horrified at a paragraph suggesting he "moved money at the direction of jailed Cali Cartel money launderer Stephen Saccoccia", he said. This suggestion was false and scandalous.
Mr O'Carroll said that Saccoccia was convicted in the US in 1993 and received a 660-year sentence on racketeering, money laundering and related charges arising from his leadership of an organisation that laundered well over $100 million in drug money during the years 1986 to 1991. The Cali Cartel was a group of Colombian drug lords.
Michael Kealey, solicitor for the three defendants, said that the letter, the subject of the alleged libel, was not published in Ireland.
The letter was faxed by Mr Alpert to a law firm in Virginia in its capacity as counsel to LETH and was addressed formally to Mr Reynolds, who is chairman of LETH.
Mr Kevin Feeney SC, for the defendants, said that after Mr O'Carroll became aware of the letter, he applied for and got a High Court order on February 20th enabling him to notify the defendants outside this jurisdiction that Mr O'Carroll would be applying for an interlocutory injunction to restrain the defendants publishing material of a defamatory nature concerning him.
Mr Feeney said that his clients would claim nothing had been published at the time those proceedings were brought by Mr O'Carroll.
No article had then been published in the magazine or on the Internet. Publication had taken place last week in Barron's and on the Internet.
In those circumstances, they were challenging the jurisdiction of the order of February 20th and were claiming that Mr O'Carroll would have to issue fresh proceedings.
The only alleged tort related to a letter and could not relate to an article which had yet to be published.
Mr O'Carroll said in his affidavit that dissemination of the contents of the letters of January 22nd had irrevocably damaged his business and social standing with Mr Reynolds and that the letter would have disastrous consequences for both his business and personal life.
Mr Kealey said in his affidavit that there was no basis on which the court could reasonably take the view that a tort was committed within this country, and therefore the order granting leave to serve outside the country should be set aside.
He said Barron's had a total of 231,792 hard-copy subscriptions and only 24 were in Ireland. Its website had about 686,000 subscribers, of which only 408 had identified an Irish address.
It was therefore clear that most of the circulation was in the US.
Mr O'Carroll claimed that the 24 copies of Barron's were, in all likelihood, being subscribed to by the major financial institutions in Ireland, including the main banks and stock broking houses and were accordingly available to ever stockbroker and investment adviser in Ireland.
He also believed that the 408 website subscribers with an Irish address were most likely people with a notable interest in financial matters in Ireland.
The hearing continues today.