Pubdate: Mon, 20 Aug 2001
Source: In These Times Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2001 In These Times
Contact:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/207
Author: Ben Winters

DUBIOUS LAWSUIT FORCES NARCO NEWS TO SHUT DOWN

The word "mismatch" hardly begins to describe it.  In one corner we
have Banamex, the National Bank of Mexico, a massive financial
institution just purchased by Citigroup for a whopping $ 12.5 billion.
  In the other corner, we have a guy with a laptop.

That guy is Al Giordano, a Boston native now of no fixed address, and
the product of his laptop is Narco News (www.narconews.com), a Web
site established in April 2000 to publish dispatches from all over
Latin America about the drug war and its fallout.  Among those
dispatches has been a fair bit of investigative reporting: a piece
detailing the various conflicts of interest that led to the
resignation of an Associated Press correspondent in Bolivia, for
example, and another on dark truths about Colombian paramilitary chief
Carlos Castano.

Narco News also has published the allegations of a Mexican journalist
named Mario Menendez Rodriguez, who reported in his Merida-based paper
Por Esto that Banamex president Roberto Hernandez Ramirez was a
narcotics trafficker.  Por Esto's reporters amassed evidence that
drugs were being bought and sold on Hernandez's many properties in
Quintana Roo, including interviews with local fishermen who claimed to
be eyewitnesses -- not to mention the bags of cocaine literally
washing up on the beach.  To quote Giordano's narco-centric prose
style, Hernandez, on top of his duties at Banamex, was "a
narco-banker" and a "narco-traficante."

Banamex was not narco-pleased.  After Giordano and Menendez traveled
to New York in March to speak about the Hernandez allegations, among
other subjects, the bank brought a libel suit against Giordano,
Menendez and Narco News itself.

The Banamex lawsuit, which began hearings on July 20, is raising
eyebrows in media-watchdog circles.  Narco News, which is written in
Mexico and run off a Web server in Maryland, is being sued in New York
on a tenuous pretext; namely that it is "affiliated with" (read:
linked to) the New York-based Web site mediachannel.org.

Much about the lawsuit is patently ridiculous, says Narco News' lawyer
Tom Lesser, starting with its whereabouts.  "This is a lawsuit brought
by a Mexican corporation against two people, one of whom [Menendez] is
a Mexican resident, and one of whom [Giordano] lives in Mexico
presently, over events that occurred in Mexico," Lesser says.  "The
lawsuit should be in Mexico."

In fact, the lawsuit has already been in Mexico, and more than once.
In two separate cases, Mexican judges have tossed out similar lawsuits
by Banamex against Menendez and Por Esto, ruling in both cases that
the paper's charges were legitimate and therefore not libelous.

Lesser suspects that bringing the case to the Big Apple has nothing to
do with proving libel.  The goal of Banamex, he fears, is to drain the
coffers of Giordano and Menendez, and caution anyone else who might
have unpleasant things to say about the bank.  "I think they want to
cause Giordano to spend so much money and so much time that he has no
resources to give to the Web site," Lesser says, "so he will not print
stories in the future which raise issues concerning the bank."

Or as Narco News correspondent Peter Gorman put it in an open letter
to readers, soliciting contributions to Giordano's already sorely
depleted legal defense fund, "Hernandez knows that neither Por Esto
nor Giordano have enough between them to buy him lunch.  What he wants
is to do is shut them down."

The heart of the Banamex lawsuit, which asks for unspecified damages
on counts of libel, slander and "interference with prospective
economic advantages," is that the "defendants published the statements
knowing they were false, and/or with reckless disregard for the truth."

This charge, Lesser says, may be the most laughable part of the whole
affair. To win, Banamex would "have to prove that Giordano and
Menendez made these statements with a reckless disregard of the facts
- -- and that they said it with malice.  But Menendez published 40
photographs.  He published photos of eyewitnesses.  Giordano did
separate interviews; he investigated it.  He absolutely believed it
was a legitimate story."

Lesser has some trouble with the idea of "interference with
prospective economic advantages" as well.  "The bank just got bought
for $ 12.5 billion by Citigroup.  What, without this they would have
gotten $ 13 billion?  This is an enormous corporation.  The sky is the
limit.  Banamex is used to having its way in Mexico and assumes it can
have its way anywhere in the world.  It's the 800-pound gorilla.  And
Giordano and Menendez had the temerity, the sheer chutzpah to suggest
that the president of the company did something wrong."
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