As you will see below, former CalPERS Chief Financial Officer Charles Asubonten is trying to silence our documentation of his vexatious legal campaign against Naked Capitalism. He is seeking the retraction of our publication of the filings in his new lawsuit in Federal Court in the Northern District of Alabama, along with some limited commentary. In a letter embedded below, our attorney Gordon Hamlin rejected Asubonten’s demand.
With advice of counsel, we are correcting a strategic error made when we publicized the history and current status of Asubonten’s repeated efforts to censor us via meritless legal actions. We were unduly demure in asking for reader financial support while also being more stringent than necessary in restricting communications about this litigation.
In light of Asubonten’s latest threat, of yet another suit in the state of Alabama, on top of his September Federal claim, we are being more upfront in asking for your backing in defending against this baseless harassment. Please head to the Tip Jar and give generously! Every donation, big or small, is very much appreciated!
If you send a check, please let us know it is en route by e-mailing yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com with “Asubonten Defense” in the subject line so we can thank you.
Please also circulate these posts to journalists. They might be interested in the finer legal points of how freedom of the press fights can play out.
As for communications, we sadly must continue to bar discussion of these frivolous actions in comments. Do feel free to e-mail to tell us you have donated or to express sympathy for our plight. However, our lawyers sternly reminded us to instruct you not to discuss the substance of these cases until we have prevailed in court. So hold those thoughts!
The best justice would be for Asubonten’s actions to raise our profile and our cash on hand.
That happened the last time we were the target of bogus accusations, from the shadowy PropOrNot, flogged by the Washington Post. The nastygrams from First Amendment expert Jim Moody, who represented us along with four other sites, led the Post to issue a strained disclaimer in lieu of a retraction. The Columbia Journalism Review and other media professionals ridiculed the Post’s refusal to climb down.
Mind you, Asuboten is not remotely the threat PropOrNot was. And in his earlier cases, we had excellent legal representation in Maryland, from very able and tenacious lawyers at Cuneo Gilbert in Washington, D.C, as you can see in:
Charles Asubonten v. Susan Webber: Filed in Maryland in July 2023, Dismissed February 2024
Charles Asubonten v. Aurora Advisors Incorporated: Filed in Maryland February 2024, Dismissed April 2025, Appeal Dismissed July 2026, Motion to Reconsider Denied August 2026
And on Asubonten’s Federal filing, lodged very shortly after the final dismissal of his Maryland actions:
Former CalPERS CFO Charles Asubonten Continues His Over Three-Year, Failed Legal Campaign to Silence Naked Capitalism Reporting With New Federal Suit in the Northern District of Alabama
As you can see from our responses, our legal team, led by Greg Brockwell of Brockwell Smith in Birmingham, Alabama, with the considerable input of Gordon Hamlin and Jim Rawls, is off to a fast and forceful start.
Now to the latest Asubonten saber-rattling. Perhaps Asubonten does not appreciate that repeatedly asserting that something is defamatory does not make it so.
00 Retraction_Demand_Webber_Aurora.11.2.2026
Our reply:
00 Letter to Asubonten–Nov. 6, 2026 2
Our October 29 post, which discussed Asubonten’s Federal filing, included three documents from our response: the Answer, the Motion for Summary Judgment, and my Affidavit, which was the first document in a 231 page Evidentiary Submission. My lawyers had suggested that I include the entire Evidentiary Submission, but it was too large to upload as a single file to WordPress. Posting 22 additional exhibits seemed overwhelming.
However, we are embedding two critical public records from that set to underscore how baseless Asubonten’s claims are.
We had pointed out in a footnote to the Motion for Summary Judgment that the one error in our 2018 reporting that Asubonten finally identified in September 2026, that he had indeed briefly been the chairman of Palabora Foundation, was not consequential because CalPERS has not made that issue part of the investigation that led to his removal from probation (note our mistake was due to an erroneous comment by a source).
Below we embed a section of a public record obtained from the California State Personnel Board, “Notice of Rejection from Probation.” It confirms our statement in the footnote, that CalPERS had not considered the matter of whether Asubonten had been the chairman of Palabora Foundation to be important enough to include in its investigation.
00 asubonten investigation from SPB report_compressed-3
We also must note that Asubonten has never disputed the accuracy of another key document in our 2018 reporting, also included in the 231 page Evidentiary Submission, that of the findings in a ruling against Asubonten in the Labour Court of South Africa. In his demand letter, Asubonten maintains that he had not “concealed the circumstances of my departure from Palabora.” Who knows exactly what CalPERS knew about this legal action? You will see the ruling includes a debate over Asubonten’s performance reviews and discusses at length that the filing against Palabora came despite a settlement agreement with Palabora’s parent, Rio Tinto.
Asubonten v. Palabora
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