PROPERTY DEVELOPER Peter Curistan has accepted about £50,000 (€57,000) in damages to settle a libel action he took over allegations in a tabloid newspaper.
Mr Curistan confirmed the resolution of his case against the Sunday World as it also emerged that he has dropped his appeal against losing a High Court case over the awarding of a major construction contract.
The businessman was to challenge a judge's ruling that the North's Department of Social Development did not act in bad faith by ditching his company, Sheridan Millennium, from the £100 million Queen's Quay riverside project in Belfast.
He claimed his "preferred developer" status was withdrawn due to unfounded allegations of a connection to IRA racketeering which were published in newspapers and then repeated by the DUP's Peter Robinson under parliamentary privilege in February 2006. The government said it was because Sheridan Millennium failed a due diligence test.
The judge hearing the case said the money-laundering allegations were baseless. However, he also identified corporate governance deficiencies within the company.
In the Court of Appeal in Belfast yesterday Mark Horner, for Mr Curistan, announced that the challenge to the ruling was not continuing. Dismissing the appeal, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr ordered that Sheridan Millennium should pay the department's legal costs.
Outside the court, Mr Curistan claimed that up to 1,000 construction jobs had been lost due to the contract not getting the go-ahead.
The developer also confirmed that he has accepted an offer by the Sunday World "to pay very substantial damages and the costs of the action" he took against it.
Mr Curistan sued over an article the newspaper ran in March 2006. He said his motivation was not financial. "No payment can ever compensate for the hurt that has been caused," he said.
The Sunday Worldsaid the libel action had been settled with Mr Curistan accepting the paper's payment into court, "coincidentally on the same day on which he abandoned his lengthy judicial review case against the government".