It's a smear campaign, says Watson - IOL

It's a smear campaign, says Watson
November 24 2006 at 12:52PM
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By Juanita Williams

Neil Watson, the founder of the controversial Crime Expo website, has hit out at reports that the website was posting racist remarks.

Watson claims that the comments were left by hackers who had cloned the user names of registered members on November 20.

"We shut the chatroom down immediately after discovering what was happening but someone copied the messages to our hosts, Siteground.com, and they sent us a message saying that our account will be suspended if we do not comply," Watson said.

The site has been down since Monday, November 20.

Simon Grindrod, the Cape Town leader of the Independent Democrats, has laid a fraud charge against Watson at the Caledon Square Police Station in Cape Town.

Grindrod called on Watson to come forward and explain what he has done with the money generated by the website, saying "it is a scandal that someone is able to capitalise on the highly emotive issue of crime".

Watson responded to the news of the charge by saying: "Anyone can lay a charge. We will give the police everything they need for their investigation. We have nothing to hide."

He denied that the website received "hundreds of thousands" in revenue, claiming that the website generated less than R8 000 in the past four months.

The Crime Expo website will apparently be relaunched with a new host by November 30. Watson has refused to reveal any information about the new Internet host.

Watson also said reports that he was a fictitious persona were "absolute nonsense".

He said claims that he was the same person as Juan Uys (a name previously linked with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, which controversially said it had recruited gay men to donate blood and lie on their forms) were also nonsense.

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