Julius Malema is hauling three newspapers to the ombudsman claiming recent reports caused him “undue harm, concern and stress”.
|||Suspended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is hauling three newspapers to the Press Ombudsman over recent reports of corruption and money-laundering allegedly committed by him, a report has said.
Malema’s complaint to the Press Ombudsman, dated November 25, was sent to The Citizen, the Sunday Independent and The Times on Monday, a report on the Citizen‘s website said.
The complaint claimed that reports published during October and November this year, which implicated Malema in corruption, fraud and money-laundering, and said that he faced arrest by the Hawks, were misleading.
According to the Citizen, Malema claims the “offensive” reports caused him “undue harm, concern and stress”.
He has demanded a retraction of the news reports and that the journalists who wrote them be reprimanded, the Citizen said.
The report says that in his complaint to the Press Ombudsman, Malema’s lawyers claimed the newspapers had damaged his reputation and defamed him in the eyes of the public.
According to them, the reports were offensive and harmful to Malema’s standing as “a prominent politician whose affairs are closely monitored by the public”.
They claimed the journalists had broken prescripts of the South African Press Code.
“Although such apologies will not undo the damage caused to Mr Malema by such serious allegations, they will go some way towards addressing the harm,” Malema’s lawyers write. - IOL