Banxso associates sue Moneyweb and GroundUp

Banxso’s bank accounts have been frozen and people who used the platform are likely to lose their money. Illustration: Lisa Nelson

Moneyweb has since February been exposing the questionable practices of online trading company Banxso. GroundUp joined the fray in November when we published an article titled Pensioner loses everything on Banxso, which Moneyweb republished.

Deep fake adverts featuring famous people, without their consent, have enticed people to use Banxso’s platform, though Banxso has denied it is associated with these adverts. The platform facilitates trade in extremely high risk financial products that should be traded only by experts, if anyone. There have been several reports of people losing their life savings through Banxso.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) “provisionally withdrew” Banxso’s licence on 16 October, following months of complaints by investors against the company.

GroundUp’s article pointed out that Banxso directors Warwick David Sneider and Harel Adam Sekler are also directors of Afrimarkets Capital.

On Wednesday two summonses were served at the GroundUp office.

In the first summons Sneider is the plaintiff. The defendants are Moneyweb, Ryk van Niekerk, the editor of Moneyweb, and Tori Newby, the journalist who wrote the article for GroundUp.

Sneider is suing the defendants for defamation with regard to two articles. The first one was written by Van Niekerk and published on Moneyweb. It is titled: Banxso – beneficiary or victim of ‘R4 800’ Musk and Rupert scams? (It’s well worth a read.)

Sneider is demanding a mere R7.5-million for this one. The second article is the one written by Newby, published by GroundUp and republished by Moneyweb. For this one Sneider is only demanding R5.8-million. No defamation award for anything remotely close to these amounts has ever been made in South Africa.

In his summons Sneider complains that readers of our article would understand him to be dishonest, unethical, untrustworthy, deceitful, unscrupulous, engaged in fraud, involved in illegal business practices, disreputable, and acting fraudulently.

In the second summons the plaintiff is Afrimarkets. The defendants are the same with the addition of GroundUp (not only our journalist).

Afrimarkets also complains about two articles. The first one is also by Van Niekerk and published on Moneyweb. It is titled AfriMarkets: Banxso’s emerging twin? (It’s also well worth a read). Afrimarkets has set its sights lower than Sneider, only demanding R5-million damages for this article.

The second article is again the GroundUp one. This time we are on a par with Moneyweb: the demand is also for R5-million.

Afrimarkets also alleges that readers would understand that it is associated with Banxso which operates without the required licence, perpetuates fraud and undertakes fake advertising. Further, readers would understand that Afrimarkets operates illegally, unethically, deceitfully, unscrupulously and in a disreputable manner.

We stand by the contents of our article and look forward to meeting the plaintiffs in court.

Incidentally, Moneyweb has been doing an excellent job reporting on Banxso and those associated with it. Besides the two mentioned above, here are some other articles:

• WATCH: Banxso defies licence suspension
• Banxso victim launches liquidation application
• Retired woman’s urgent court action follows after R500 000 was ‘wiped out’
• Banxso agents allegedly mislead clients on licence status
• The FIC busts Banxso
• Moneyweb editor threatened with the distribution of fake news about ‘criminal activity’
• Banxso continues to take money despite banks freezing its accounts
• Banxso denies links to historic binary options scam, fake ads
• FSCA investigating Banxso and link to fake ads
• Sekler accuses Moneyweb editor of being ‘hostile, aggressive and unprofessional’

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