Police take unlicensed papers from circulation |28 September 2011

The papers are Le Seychellois Hebdo, Ansanm and Boycott.

She said some were purportedly being published under the licence of bigger newspapers, but each of them needed to be licensed separately, and the licence of one under whose aegis the smaller one was supposedly produced expired in January.

Mrs Berlouis said a member of the public went to complain about negative publicity one of them carried about him, but upon checking their records, the SLA realised it was not licensed.

“The paper was called Ansanm which seems to have had earlier issues because this one was numbered ‘5’”.

“The paper does not say who the printer is as required by law, but says it has been published by Wavel Ramkalawan, Philippe Boullé and Ralph Volcère under the licence of Weekly Publications,” she said.

She however added that SLA records show Weekly Publications have a licence to produce only one newspaper which is Le Nouveau Seychelles Weekly, so the SLA handed the matter to the police “because it constitutes a criminal offence”.

Mrs Berlouis said the police will take action against Mr Boullé and Mr Ramkalawan if they feel such action needs to be taken.

“However, where the Weekly is concerned, the issue is they published something under their licence without a licence for the extra publication”.

The Seychellois  Publications is licensed to produce Le Seychellois Hebdo only.

“If they want to publish anything else they need to swear an affidavit showing the name of the extra paper so if any member of the public wants to take action against something in the paper we would have the records exactly who are involved,” she said.

“Le Seychellois Hebdo filed an application last week but before we finished the procedure to license it – which involved talking to the media commission – they went ahead and produced it.

“But when the affidavit came out, it was not in order as it came from another company, which meant they would have to get a totally new licence.”

Mrs Berlouis said it is easy to get a licence for a newspaper and for additional publications the fee is only R4,000, but every name of a new publication must be approved to ensure it has not already been reserved by another company and is not offensive.

“We have recently given licences for other publications but they must be licensed properly,” she said.