Magic Alex - The Media and The Courts

The Media and The Courts

On 28 February 1988, The Observer published an article naming Mardas as an arms dealer, but printed an apology on 30 April 1989. After an article on 18 September 1988 ("Joan's Secret Lover"), and another a week later, The People newspaper was taken court by Mardas, who won £75,000 in damages. The Daily Mail published an apology and gave an undisclosed sum in damages on 16 January 2004, after an article on 11 June 2003, which accused Mardas of dealings that would later resurface in his claim against the New York Times in 2008.

The Independent newspaper apologised on 21 August 2006, writing that on 14 June 2006, the paper had wrongly reported Mardas' involvement with Apple Electronics Ltd. They corrected the earlier piece by writing that Mardas had not been a company employee, but a director and shareholder of Apple Electronics, and was not sacked, but resigned his directorship in May 1971, while still retaining his shareholding, until giving it to Apple Corps some years later. The paper accepted that Mardas “did not claim to have invented electric paint, a flying saucer or a recording studio with a ‘sonic force field’ or cause his employers to waste money on such ideas. We apologise to Mr. Mardas for these errors". Mardas is now living in Athens, Greece.

In 2008, Mardas won the right to sue the New York Times about an online article which said he was a charlatan. In a story about the Maharishi, Allan Kozinn had written: "Alexis Mardas, a supposed inventor and charlatan who had become a Beatles’ insider". After an appeal, Mardas won the right to continue his case of defamation against the New York Times in 2009. After the New York Times produced a witness, one Sir Harry Evans, who gave evidence supporting the journalistic responsibility of the paper, Mardas said he would not pursue the case further, but only if the paper would publicly explain that by labelling him as him a charlatan, it did not mean to imply that he was a conman. On 4 March 2010, the New York Times published an editor's update to the 2008 article, saying: "While expressing skepticism about his work as an inventor during that period, the article did not accuse Mr. Mardas of engaging in fraudulent dealings or criminality... The Times’s reporting on those events was attributed to Paul McCartney and based on widely published accounts from books and magazines..."