A series of Australian Financial Review articles wove a "false narrative" that Papua New Guinea energy minister William Duma acted corruptly in granting a petroleum licence, a court has found.
On Tuesday, Mr Duma was vindicated in his Federal Court suit against the Nine-owned Fairfax being awarded $545,000 over a series of defamatory AFR articles by Angus Grigg and Jemima Whyte in February 2020.
Justice Anna Katzmann found Fairfax's articles about the politician's involvement in a PNG petroleum licence tender in 2010 and 2011 were not written as a "bare, factual report" but were rather were "replete with errors and misrepresentations".
The articles were "spiced with an account of suspicious circumstances" against the politician, the judge said.
"The ordinary reasonable reader is prone to loose thinking and reads between the lines. And that is precisely what the respondents encouraged them to do. This article was awash with innuendo," she wrote.
"The articles told the reader that Mr Duma was up to no good, more particularly that he was corrupt and successfully orchestrated the payment of a bribe. Moreover, they indicated that there was a trove of documents to prove it."
Justice Katzmann found the articles falsely claimed the politician engaged in corruption, took a bribe from an oil company, conspired with a lawyer to use a shell company to pay bribes to himself, and corruptly tried to move a naval base inland.
A further imputation, that Mr Duma defrauded tribal landowners of compensation, was not made out.
In rejecting Fairfax's defence of qualified privilege, Justice Katzmann found the conduct of the publisher was less than reasonable and inexcusable because they did not properly look over the leaked documents handed to them.
"While they may have read the documents, they did not accurately report the contents of many upon which they relied. And they did not always check the facts," the judge wrote.
"They did not take care to distinguish between suspicions, allegations and proven facts. They did not report the substance of Mr Duma's 'side of the story' in relation to all the matters complained of."
No reasonable attempt was made to contact him for comment and the publisher in fact misled him, Justice Katzmann found.
An amount of $500,000 in aggravated damages plus $45,000 in interest was awarded to Mr Duma as vindication and as compensation for damage to his reputation and hurt to feelings.
Now public enterprise and state investment minister, he was petroleum and energy minister from July 2007 to February 2014.
The articles reported on a bid by Horizon Oil to extend its petroleum licences over PNG's Elevala and Ketu Gas Fields. Horizon was then a partner in a joint venture led by Santos Niugini Exploration.
While this application was pending, Santos decided to sell its stake in the JV to a subsidiary of Talisman Energy for $20 million.
On November 5, 2010, Mr Duma rejected the extension and opened tenders for a new licence.
While Horizon initially fought this decision in the PNG courts, Mr Duma eventually approved the licence to a consortium of Horizon, Dabajodi Energy International and Elevala Energy.
The AFR articles falsely claimed Mr Duma did not act on the advice of the government's Petroleum Advisory Board but awarded the licence to a consortium that included shell company Elevala, whose director was one of his "close associates".
A second Federal Court lawsuit over two articles written by Grigg and Whyte in April 2020 settled in July 2021 for a confidential sum.
