Legal proceedings for defamation initiated against WSJ by a Tether shareholder following the article published in February 2023.
On February 28th, the news agency Dow Jones & Company, owner of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), was sued for defamation over allegations made in the article about Tether and Bitfinex published in February 2023.
According to the investigative website OffshoreAlert, the legal action was initiated by Tether shareholder Christopher Harborne and his company AML Global Ltd. Since 2016, Harborne has held a 13% stake in the Tether company, although he has stated that he does not hold any executive positions within the company.
The legal complaint disputes the claims made by the WSJ, which identified Harborne and AML Global Ltd as responsible for fraud, money laundering, and financing terrorism. Harborne contends that the WSJ and its journalists were aware of the falsehood of these claims.
The contested article
The article claimed that the financial backers of the Bitfinex exchange were struggling to maintain access to the banking system at the end of 2018. These difficulties allegedly led the companies to resort to “shadowy intermediaries, falsification of documents, and shell companies.”
The article devoted five paragraphs to Harborne and AML Global’s application to open an account at Signature Bank.
The article amendment
On February 21st, 2024, the WSJ issued a correction to the article. The section dedicated to the request to open an account was removed to avoid “any possible assumption” linking AML Global Ltd’s attempt to open an account at Signature Bank to an orchestrated action by Tether, Bitfinex, or related companies to “mislead banks.”
The WSJ also clarified that the deleted section was not meant to imply that Harborne or AML Global Ltd had omitted or falsified information during the account opening process.
