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Oh dear, oh dear - we have deeply upset and offended one Edward Pastorini. Last week, we had the temerity to suggest that the purported US financier’s plan to launch a bid for Gold Fields, as reported by Bloomberg, didn’t seem to stack up. In fact, we suggested that the mysterious Mr Pastorini does not, in fact, exist.

Now a barrage of emails have arrived at FT HQ. Not we might add to the FT Alphaville news desk as might be thought logical - we were after all the ones who started the finger pointing. But no, “Mr Pastorini” has instead taken umbrage with various of our newspaper colleagues. Nevermind - they’re thick skinned.

Here it is…or at the least the first instalment:

To Tony Tassell, Alec Russell, and all at FT and FTAlphaville:

Question: How can anyone doubt our offer for Gold Fields, when over 30 gold mining companies were contacted by us to join our partnership? Four gold mining companies said yes. Three others are thinking about it. Today they all thanked us for keeping their names out of the limelight, as did our corporate raider and LBO firm partners. If we were to disclose their names publicly, Gold Fields shares would soar in value way ahead of our schedule, and that would make it extremely difficult for our acquisition. This way, everyone thinks it is a hoax, and hopefully it will stay that way until June! You know nothing about us and never will! Your FTAlphaville publication even makes up nonsense about my name! What kind of people are you - reporting on something that you know nothing about. We told Stewart Bailey of Bloomberg when he contacted us that we shun and loathe the media and have managed to stay private for over 25 years, (now do you see why!), and we told Bloomberg that they should NOT publish that article. Yet Bloomberg insisted that they had to now, since Gold Fields itself leaked it to them! So now they are looking for a fall guy to blame for their mess that they themselves created. Get a life! The only reason we talked with Bloomberg at all was to make sure the story was correct. Since Gold Fields had already leaked it out, it was too late for us to deny it or to say no “No comment”. If you want to know if we are real and if our offer for Gold Fields is real, contact the 30 largest gold companies in the world (other than Barrick, AngloAshanti Gold, and Goldcorp who we didn’t contact because we already knew they weren’t interested at this time), and ask them if we contacted them about joining our partnership. How could this possibly not be real, since in the past month we contacted over 30 gold companies to join us? You people desperately need to get a life! And I am really Edward Pastorini!

I challenge FTAlphaville to produce even one iota of irrefutable proof that I am not Edward Pastorini and that our offer for Gold Fields is not genuine. Send us your IRREFUTABLE PROOF. Now I hope you will have the decency to give us as much truthful coverage as you gave us negative coverall in your publications. You owe us a public apologiy [sic]. Just because we loathe the media and prefer to remain behind the scenes - with good reason when there are idiots like you out there - that does not mean that we are not genuine. We are waiting for your public apology and for your 100% irreefutable [sic] proof that I am not Edward Pastorini and that our offer for Gold Fields is not real. We’re waiting. Send us your NEW article now - or do you not ever admit your mistakes?

Edward Pastorini

That told us.

But wait! There’s more to come…..