People value papers and journalists that will stand up for public interest reporting
On May 13 2026, the Financial Times reported that Crispin Odey had settled personal injury claims that had been brought against him for sexual assault. The settlements came just a month before a trial was due to begin against the Financial Times, in which Odey was suing the outlet for defamation in a claim seeking £79 million in damages after the outlet published several articles detailing claims from 20 women that Odey had sexually harassed or assaulted them over a period of five decades. Odey decided to drop the case based on the fact that the newspaper was likely to succeed in establishing its public interest defence.
While the case is not a SLAPP case, it is an example of a wealthy individual attempting to silence an outlet for public interest reporting. Antonia Cundy, a special investigations reporter for the Financial Times, and part of the team that uncovered decades of sexual misconduct by Odey, spoke to us about the investigation, how to engage in best practice journalism and why it is important not to let legal threats deter public interest journalism.
Antonia noted how there had been articles published in prior outlets concerning Odey’s behaviour, but it was following these when more women came forward with complaints who had not previously been involved in the prior reporting. It was then when Antonia stated that it ‘felt like the whole story hadn’t been fully told’ and she, Madison Marriage and Paul Caruana Galizia began to investigate further which led to the series of articles published by the Financial Times.
It was just under a year after publication of the investigation when Odey’s lawyers sent the Financial Times the letter of claim. ‘He issued a claim with 12 days left before he wouldn’t be able to do so, and then that in turn gave him four more months to decide whether to serve it’. The articles were published in June 2023 and under defamation law, a claimant has twelve months to issue a claim in court. Odey also hired a private investigator, as reported by Bloomberg.
When it comes to engaging in best practice journalism, Antonia stated that it is imperative that you keep contemporaneous notes: ‘Document your investigation well, because you can have undertaken all the other best practices but if you can’t evidence them, you will struggle in court. It is very onerous, but it’s important.’ She also mentioned that while having disappearing messages is a practice that some journalists engage in, she warned that there can be negative implications: ‘You potentially won’t be able to recall when they ask you to prove that you had a call or you discussed something, for example, one day in May three years ago.’ She stated how this contemporaneous notekeeping was important in the lead up to the trial, even though the trial did not happen: ‘Our witness statements which we prepared ran to nearly 100 pages long and they included all sorts of details about conversations we’d had. Madison and I did not have disappearing messages between our conversations and we kept a very close spreadsheet and entry notes of our investigation methods which proved to be very valuable’.
She also stated that it was important to be able ‘to evidence how you test allegations – stress test them, corroborate accounts, check things make sense and that they stand up. Obviously, once you have done this, the right to reply process is then key when you have all your evidence. Constantly keep track of your public interest thinking too.’
Antonia also stated that when the letter of claim arrived, there was a lot of work that initially had to be done: ‘It had an impact. There’s a lot of work to do because you have to go and ask all our sources to become witnesses. The following couple of years, it took up probably 20 to 50% of my working life, at times much much more. But we were incredibly confident in the reporting and following publication, another seven women had come forward.’
But even though legal letters can be challenging and difficult to deal with, Antonia emphasises the importance of not giving up on public interest reporting: ‘It’s really important. The messages we received afterwards when he dropped it — from people who either were going to be our witnesses or just from observers who follow the news —really emphasise that, and how much people value papers and journalists that will stand up to these people.’
Even though the case was dropped, Antonia states that there is one negative takeaway: ‘there’s nothing stopping someone wasting years of people’s lives and millions of pounds in bringing these claims if they are meritless.’