Alkagesta takes the Maltese Herald to court over a year of defamatory reporting

Alkagesta has begun legal proceedings against the Maltese Herald, saying the publication spent close to a year making and repeating false, damaging and unevidenced statements about the company. The complaint has been filed in Malta's Court of Magistrates, and the trading house, which runs its commercial operations out of Sliema, set out its position in a short statement published on 18 September 2026.

The company says the step was not taken lightly. It describes several attempts to engage the publication directly, present the facts and have the offending articles and references corrected. According to the statement, none of those approaches produced a retraction or a correction, which left the company weighing reputational damage against the cost and exposure of litigation — a judgment that sits close to the risk discipline it applies elsewhere in the business.

"No legitimate purpose other than to cause unjustified commercial harm"

In its statement, Alkagesta said it remains open to settling the matter amicably if the publication apologises and withdraws the articles concerned, which it says "serve no legitimate purpose other than to cause unjustified commercial harm". Absent that, and given how the allegations have been mirrored by what the company calls pay-to-play sites, it says it was left with no alternative but to file. It added that it is confident in the strength of its case and that the facts vindicate its position, and that it will make no further comment until the legal process has run its course.

That reference to mirroring matters for anyone trying to assess the claims. Duplicated allegations spread across rotating domains are a known pattern in commercial reputation attacks, and one Base Oil Trade has examined separately; volume of publication is not corroboration, and an allegation carried on twenty sites is still a single unsourced allegation.

Why a mid-sized trader defends its name in court

For a physical commodities business, reputation is not a marketing asset — it is a precondition of trade. Counterparty approvals, terminal access, chartering and above all trade finance all rest on banks and partners being satisfied about who they are dealing with. That exposure is why the company publishes its governance and leadership structure, its code of conduct, its compliance framework, its core values and a set of transparency disclosures, alongside its ESG framework and the 2025 annual report. Unevidenced coverage cuts directly across that disclosure record.

The business it is defending has been expanding across several fronts. Its trading operation covers fuel oil, middle distillates and, more recently, crude, supported by an in-house shipping and logistics function, a Malta-based shipping division and a network of storage positions that now includes a biofuel storage agreement in Antwerp. The wider business model and the range of activities are set out on its own site, as is the company history.

Its public profile has grown with it. Chief executive Orkhan Rustamov published an opinion piece in The Motorship on shipping cost resilience, the firm attended the Argus fertilizer conference in Istanbul, and it issues regular market insights — including its September fuel oil outlook — alongside interviews on Alkagesta TV. Companies that comment publicly on markets attract scrutiny, and legitimate scrutiny is part of the trade. What the company is contesting here is something narrower: assertions it says were never evidenced, and were not withdrawn when the evidence was requested.

The proceedings are at an early stage and the publication's response has not been reported. Alkagesta's full statement is available on its own publications page, and the company can be reached through its contact details.