Allied Group has denied claims made in an article published by Lovin Malta revealing how Progress Press inflated its print figures in invoices to magazines issued in their publications.

On invoices, Progress Press used to bill magazines for 40,000 printed copies. Yet multiple unconnected sources, including sources within Allied Newspapers, told Lovin Malta that the actual circulation of the print newspaper at the time hovered at a bit more than half that figure.

This is Allied Group’s right of reply:

“The Allied Group refers to the article published by LovinMalta entitled ‘Revealed: Progress Press inflated figures in invoices to magazines’.”

“The heading and large parts of the article penned by Victor Paul Borg have no basis in fact and are defamatory.”

“Mr Borg was informed that his allegations were untrue when he sought a reaction to his article from the company. He was also told that rather than asking legitimate questions, what he was actually doing was making a series of vague and defamatory statements. He chose to leave out this element of our reply as it obviously did not suit his agenda.”

“Furthermore, he failed to provide any references whatsoever to specific instances and failed to provide any evidence whatsoever to back up his fanciful assertions.”

“Allied Group reserves its rights at law to institute legal proceedings against Mr Borg and the publisher of this malicious article, Lovin Malta.”

Lovin Malta would like to clarify that it stands by its story and that evidence in hand was not published to protect our sources.