SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Feb. 27, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- FreeStar Technology Corporation (OTCBB:FSTI) announced that a memorandum of decision dismissing the Chapter 7 Involuntary Bankruptcy Petition, brought against the Company on January 9, 2003, was signed yesterday afternoon.
Pursuant to the ruling by Honorable Judge Allan L. Gropper, the Chapter 7 Petition brought in January by vFinance, Inc., David Stefansky, Richard Rosenblum, Marc Siegel, Papell Holdings LLC and Boat Basin Investors Ltd. in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, will be dismissed promptly. As contended in FreeStar's Motion to Dismiss of February 4, 2003, the Petitioners held no claims against FreeStar that were not the subject of a bona fide dispute.
FreeStar is of the opinion that the Chapter 7 Petition was filed in bad faith in order to depress FreeStar's share price and thus allow the Petitioners to cover a substantial naked short position in FSTI stock. FreeStar will seek substantial punitive and consequential damages, pursuant to provisions of the Bankruptcy Code, relating to the Petitioners' actions causing the Company's market capitalization to decrease significantly on and about January 10, 2003. The first of such motions, seeking statutory recovery of FreeStar's fees and costs, is likely to be filed within the next two weeks.
Paul Egan, President and Chief Executive Officer of FreeStar, stated, "While the facts of this case were clear, we commend the diligent endeavors of our defense team. Justice has been served by today's ruling and we look forward to focusing our efforts on FreeStar's core business without further distraction."
About FreeStar Technology Corporation
With Corporate headquarters in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and offices in Dublin, Ireland, and Helsinki, Finland, FreeStar Technology is focused on exploiting a first-to-market advantage for enabling ATM and debit card transactions on the Internet and high-margin credit card processing through a leading Northern European processor, Rahaxi Processing Oy. FreeStar Technology's Enhanced Transactional Secure Software ("ETSS") is a proprietary software package that empowers consumers to consummate e-commerce transactions on the Internet with a high level of security using credit, debit, ATM (with PIN) or smart cards. It sends an authorization number to the e-commerce merchant, rather than the consumer's credit card information, to provide a high level of security. For more information, please visit the Company's web sites at www.freestartech.com, www.rahaxi.com and www.epaylatina.com
Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.