Billionaire businessman wins defamation case in Australia

SYDNEY — A billionaire busi- nessman won a defamation case Friday against a media organization that he claimed had wrongly linked him to a bribery case that impli- cated a former president of the U.N. General Assembly.

The businessman, Chau Chak Wing, a well-connected political donor in Austra- lia, was awarded$200,000 in damages in the verdict against Fairfax Media and journalist John Garnaut. Fairfax said it was appeal- ing the decision.

In an October 2015 article, the Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax newspa- per, reported Chau’s supposed connection with an international bribery scan- dal involving John Ashe, a former president of the U.N. General Assembly. The article was published around

the time that U.S. prosecu- tors charged that Ashe had accepted bribes from Chi- nese businessmen to support their interests at the United Nations and Ashe’s native Antigua. Ashe died in 2016.

After Friday’s ruling, Chau, a billionaire property developer who immigrated to Australia decades ago and has faced previous accusations of using his money to meddle in the country’s politics on behalf of China, said he would continue to donate to “worthy causes as I have always done.”

“I make no apology for my philanthropy, and con- sider it a duty to give back after the good fortune I have experienced with my business,” he said in a statement.

“As an Australian citizen, I will continue to proudly promote positive Austra- lia-China relations.”

“I am in the fortunate position where I have the resources available to me to defend myself when media outlets make false and misleading claims, through the Australian legal system,” he said.

Justice Michael Wigney said Garnaut’s October 2015 article “detailed Dr. Chau’s apparent wealth, the various political and other donations he had made in Australia over the years, and his contacts and associations with certain Australian politicians on both sides of the divide.”

“It appeared to somehow link the bribery allegations with Dr. Chau’s donations and political connections,”

the judge wrote. Referring to Kingold, one of Chau’s companies, the judge said the article suggested that it was “likely to have much more to tell, while we all learn whether the extraordinary Kingold kingdom of Australia and China relations was built upon illicit payments and hot air.”

Wigney said that while Garnaut asserted that “he had taken care to avoid conveying anything beyond a strong suspicion that Dr.

Chau had bribed Ashe, I was not satisfied that Garnaut had in fact exercised reasonable care.”

“Had he done so, he would not have used the sensationalist, hyperbolic and generally derisive language that he used in the article,” the judge added. “Nor would he have included the assertions about Dr. Chau possibly remaining in China to avoid extradition.”

The Australian Broadcast

ing Corp. faces a separate defamation case filed by

Chau for its reporting.