Nickie Vella de Fremeaux Accuses NET Boss Of Undermining Her Mental Health In Bitter Facebook Row
Nickie Vella de Fremeaux with her husband, Opposition leader Adrian Delia
Nickie Vella de Fremeaux has accused one of her husband’s closest advisers, NET TV boss Pierre Portelli, of undermining her mental health and breaching copyright law.
In a long post, Vella de Fremeaux said she had requested to meet Portelli to discuss a copyright dispute with NET TV scriptwriter Sandro Vella countless times. Such a meeting was never forthcoming, reducing Vella de Fremeaux to relaying her concerns to Portelli through her husband Adrian Delia, who she repeatedly described as “Your Kap”.
“As frustrating as it was, I would feed you my version of the facts through your own Kap – only to get either another contorted irrelevant reply or be refused access to any documents or better still be accused of such incredible and surreal things that one is totally dumbfounded,” she wrote. “I’m mentioning this incident so that next time you introduce me to your staff in my absence you can be correct and precise in trying to pass me off as a fruit basket.”
NET boss Pierre Portelli
“Pierre, I actually suffer from depression and, unlike what you may like to portray me as, this does not make one mad. Indeed learn that whatever the condition is, mental health illness is not a death sentence. I am not ashamed to suffer from depression – so please get off your high horse and spare me from all your air and pomp- stop the prejudice and kill the stigma Pierre!”
“Indeed, may I further ensure you that my depression makes me no less of a human : on the contrary it makes me stronger and a more sensitive person which is precisely who I am always seeing to the needs of others.”
The copyright case in question revolves around the script for the new NET TV drama series ‘Fattigi’. Vella wrote the script but quit the show before it aired, allegedly after discovering that it wasn’t going to be produced by NET, but by Portelli’s own private production company Watermelon Productions. He has now sued Portelli for allegedly breaching copyright laws after NET decided to air Fattigi without informing or even crediting him, and has roped in the PN leader’s own wife as an ally.
“Anyone who uses any material or as in this case a story, which is copyrighted yet this right is vested in a third party and has not been assigned to you by means of a copyright transfer agreement, then such person is deemed to be committing a crime,” Vella de Fremeaux, herself a lawyer, said. “It is also illegal to erase the identity of the real without and replace his name with that of an imposter. Such was the case here.”
“I trust that this is simply owing to the fact that someone is ignorant of the law and didn’t consult with his lawyers before this all got out of hand.”
“I have refrained from referring to this controversy surrounding Fattigi because it directly involved concerns two friends of mine and therefore I once again for the umpteenth time call upon all those concerned urging them to sit round a table with their respective legal counsel in the hope that business integrity finally prevails ; the scam ended ; and any dissension erased once and for all.”
Portelli hit back, accusing Vella de Fremeaux of allowing Vella to “weaponise” her against himself and his family, MediaLink and against “the party your husband leads”.
“You were fed lies and half truths but didn’t take the time to listen to the other side of the story,” he said. “You have no idea what this man put me, my wife and other people through.”
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