British investment firm Capital Holdings Ltd last week asked the South Gauteng High Court to make the Mail & Guardian newspaper withdraw and apologise for their allegations that their company or some of its personnel were linked to a South African Ponzi scheme. They also asked that the paper be gagged from publishing anything further on the matter.

M&G argued that they had good reason to publish the story and that it would be a breach of media freedom clauses of the constitution to prevent them from covering the story in future.

CFE and Media Monitoring Africa joined the case as amicus curiae, concerned at the implications of the matter for media freedom. CFE and MMA also argued that if Capital Holdings thought the story was inaccurate, the right route would have been to take the matter to the Press Council.

Judgement was reserved.