Melbourne rich lister Tolga Kumova's defamation hearing over tweets by the Stock Swami Twitter account which claimed he engaged in insider trading, and "pump and dump" share schemes has begun.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court heard that Alan Francis Davison had ruined Mr Kumova's reputation by sending a multitude of tweets from 2018 to 2020 through the Stock Swami account.
"My client's reputation up to the point where the respondent started accusing him of various unethical and illegal practices was an excellent reputation," said barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC.
Born in 1978 to immigrant parents, Mr Kumova worked since he was 15 years old to support his family and started a successful car wash business when he left high school.
He graduated with a degree in banking and finance from Monash in 2001, and began work at stockbroker Shaw and Partners in 2005.
In his first breakout investment, he made around $30 million through shares in Syrah Resources which acquired his licence to mine a graphite deposit in Mozambique. He then established a reputation for investing in high risk small cap mining stocks, and now invests in around 40 companies at a time.
Mr Davison is a Hindu Swami who spent more than a decade in an Indian ashram in the 1970s and 80s. After working as a taxi driver, he then earned an income through search engine optimisation and monetising a number of adult websites in the early 2000s, and now makes money from Google ads.
Ms Chrysanthou told the court Mr Davison did not have any expertise or qualifications in stockbroking, despite frequently tweeting on the subject, and questioned how he could proclaim he was a "citizen journalist" in his Stock Swami bio.
The barrister said although the tweets had started in 2018, Mr Kumova had attempted to reach a resolution with Mr Davison outside the courts, filing the lawsuit in September 2020 after no progress was made.
"It's not as though a few tweets went up and my client ran to court. He's not over-sensitive. He's not a person that can't take criticism," she told Justice Michael Lee.
Before the case began, Mr Davison refused to stop his tweets even though his lawyers were negotiating with Mr Kumova's legal counsel at the time.
"I ain't going to shut up about Tolga. I won't be muzzled," he said in private messages to a friend.
The lawsuit focuses on six tweets sent by Mr Davison relating to three companies which Mr Kumova had invested in at the time: European Cobalt, now known as Aston Minerals, New Century Resources and Bellevue Gold.
Mr Kumova says he was defamed by the tweets which claimed he engaged in insider trading, conducted unlawful activity on the Australian Stock Exchange, and was part of a pump and dump syndicate which misled the Australian public.
Despite apologising to Mr Kumova a few weeks after the lawsuit began, Mr Davison then tweeted that evidence, witnesses, rumours and legal costs had all been fabricated through the defamation case, the court heard.
Mr Davison has pleaded truth to some of the imputations, claiming Mr Kumova made a number of misleading statements to the market both through his own twitter account and through interviews with Stockhead.
Calling Twitter a "virus", Ms Chrysanthou said it was difficult to determine how many people had seen the allegedly defamatory tweets.
"The way that it disseminates information at a rapid rate is quite incomprehensible," she told the court.
The hearing continues.
