After an extensive correspondence with our GoogleAds service-provider, we can confirm that GoogleAds has demonetised us and have taken us off their platform in response to a very extensive and year-long campaign of legal warfare, and vexatious copyright and trademark claims by Alkagesta.
This action follows the suspension of our Instagram account on the same campaign involving hundreds if not thousands of vexatious copyright claims.
The latest vexatious copyright claim is about an article we published about the registered owner of Alkagesta Kamran Agayev, which has been posted below. The complaint is about his photo in Moscow featured above.
Kamran Agayev is the cousin Adnan Ahmadzada, and Ahmadzada is the real owner of Alkagesta. He was arrested last year in Azerbaijan over extensive oil fraud accusations.
Alkagesta has commissioned a number of lawyers and academics to wage a campaign of legal warfare against press outlets investigating the company, with the aim of forcing the removal of online articles published about it. We can confirm that none of the articles that we have published about Alkagesta have been deleted and none will be deleted. We will not compromise our editorial integrity for GoogleAds and instead we will take this to higher levels.
Alkagesta is Malta’s biggest oil-bunkerer. It has been listed in a UN report of violating Libyan oil sanctions and has also imported Russian oil in Malta.
Alkagesta is an Azeri company and an offshoot created by oil and gas traders at Socar who also worked on the Electrogas project.
Our investigation on Alkagesta was also extensively reported in the Azeri press.
The aim of Alkagesta was to ensure that our investigation is taken off from the internet, and on this task they have failed. We would never delete an investigation if we are threatened financially because our editorial integrity is priceless.
However the decision by GoogleAds is existentially crippling because small publishers depend on it as their main source of revenue. This compels us to go much bigger and push harder on donations and subscriptions.
We are confident that in the long-term basis we will successfully address this situation with the platforms either via mediation or in a legal manner. We have already submitted the necessary legal letters and process. We also intend to take extraordinary legal action against Alkagesta itself.
In the meantime, we have to ensure our survival which will be challenging without our main source of income. We can surely guarantee these things. That our investigation on Alkagesta will be intensified and that our legal challenges will be taken to higher levels.
We also do not rule out that this maleficent campaign by the oil-bunkering company is being done with the approval of the current government. The company has been allowed to operate with impunity in Malta and there is also a mystery as to how this very small and obscure company ended being the most active oil bunkerer at the Freeport’s oil terminal (Evos).
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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