Mr De Freitas,

We applaud (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) for contacting BT and the Police - as we feel he should have done two months ago.

In the absence of action by Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) we had drafted our own notification to both BT and the Police about the calls and we shall send these to them in case we may be of assistance.

We made it clear to your client that we thought he should bring the problem to the immediate attention of BT and the Police when he first reported it to us, but he told us he had no plans to do so. We retain a copy of that correspondence.

Should any other of your clients face malicious phone calls, you might serve those clients even better than you already do by first pointing out to them that BT advises such people to contact it at no charge after the first such call.

BT does explicitly set this out on its web site at:
http://www.informationandservices.bt.com/malicall/index.html

Please note and respond to the fact that we still await your explanation of the problems of assuming any "possible link between these telephone calls and [our] website".

In your latest email dated 26 October 1999, you claim that the "only reason" we "singled out" Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) was to distress him. The reality is that we were merely reporting the facts. Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) selected himself when he chose to send us threatening emails in order to sway our coverage of actual events concerning CIFAS and its resistance to accepting the service of a legal notice.

We then reported that Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) was trying influence our reporting and produced the evidence to support that claim. As Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) turned from trying to sway our reporting to trying to silence some of it, we continued to report and continued to publish supporting evidence.

If we did not support our claims with evidence, surely no right-thinking member of the public would believe that these events had actually happened?

Those efforts - all by Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) , or initiated by Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) - have escalated to the point where he is now employing one of the country's finest lawyers to use a variety of legal threats to suppress our coverage of actual events.

Let us summarise the facts in chronological order:

1)  Staff at CIFAS refused to accept delivery of a valid legal notice. This was the first contact we had with them. This is a bizarre way to treat a concerned member of the public attempting to serve a legal document. We can only imagine how the courts would react upon hearing that this is how CIFAS reacts to the service of legal documents.

2)  Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) - CIFAS's executive director - then criticised us for reporting what had happened.

3)  Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) then tried to sway our reporting of his criticism.

4)   Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) then threatened - and we quote him here - "to force the issue" by "complaining to the Data Protection Registrar's Office" - despite the fact that we obviously do not fall within Data Protection Registrar's jurisdiction.

5)   Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) and/or CIFAS then employed Paisner & Co - one of Britain's most feared and respected legal firms - to issue threats of legal action against us for reporting the above facts. The implication of those threats were that we face action under two of the most feared of England's laws: those of libel and criminal harassment.

In the light of these facts, it is hardly accurate to claim that we have "inexplicably singled out Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) ".

Your own threats of legal action merely confirm that CIFAS - a body that claims to safeguard the interests of the British public - is using the law for its own ends - namely, to suppress honesty.

With regard to the issue of whether we can or cannot publish copies of correspondence sent to us:

1)  A large part of our web-site consists of copies of letters sent to, and by, various organisations. It always has. As an intelligent man, Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) would have been aware that it did so when he first threatened us for reporting the facts.

2)   The email we sent to you before you began your own threats - dated 22 October 1999 - made clear the fact that we retain the right to publish any and all correspondence that is sent to us. Your response to that email was to send an email detailing more threats.

3)   In our subsequent email of 25 October 1999, we outlined why you had granted your consent to publication. Your response to that email was to send another detailed email.

We trust that this summary has helped clarify your client's position.

In order to move forward from this sorry episode:

a) we still await your explanation of how our lowly web-site could have "a possible link" with Mr 's (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) telephone harassment.

b) we await an explanation of how we have "singled out" Mr (Censored due to Cifas's legal threats) by reporting evidence of his attempts to sway and then silence us.

If you are unable to do so, you may wish to explain to your client whether or not your own actions in the last 72 hours have advanced its interests.

Lee
for The Home Repossession Page

Home Page	Receive free news and updates
	Tell a friend about this site
Last modified: 03 Oct 2000
© The Home Repossession Page 1997-2000