reporter Ben Butler is the latest in a string of cases where powerful business interests have taken legal action to restrain reporting." In May 2013, Joyce and Reed were found guilty of defrauding Sunland by a Dubai court. This decision was overturned in November 2013, and Joyce, Lee and Reed were acquitted. Two months earlier, the Victorian Supreme Court judged that Sunland had run the case "for ulterior motive or in wilful disregard of the facts or clearly established law". The specific ulterior motive named by the justice was that the case had been launched to recover the passport of Sunland Executive David Brown who was under suspicion of having bribed Dubai authorities. The Dubai legal battle ended in December 2013, when Sunland was ordered to pay $6.7 million in legal fees to Joyce and Reed. The trial judge stated that Sunland's case was "simply implausible", that documents had been fabricated, that Sunland Executive David Brown was "unreliable", that Sunland founder Soheil Abedian was a "consistently uncooperative witness", and that Sunland had failed to disclose that it was under investigation for bribery in Dubai noting he was forwarding his judgement to ASIC which had opened an investigation of Sunland in 2012. ASIC dropped inquiries in 2016 without reporting a reason and with no action taken. Sahba Abedian commented "We are pleased with the outcome, which reconfirms Sunland’s position over the course of the last number of years." Political donations During the Dubai legal case Soheil Abedian personally donated $12,500 to the Liberal National Party shortly after Stuart Robert gave a speech to the Australian Parliament written by the companies lobbyist, Simone Holzapfel, and in addition over 2014 and 2015 Abedian and the Sunland Group donated at least $25,000 to the LNP, which caused the Australian Labor Party to describe it as a "cash for comment" deal, although Sunland denied receiving any benefit from its donations. A news report on the donation noted Abedian had also donated to the Labor Party in the past. In 2016 further concerns were raised regarding Roberts links to Sunland due to his support for one of the companies construction projects on the Gold Coast after he admitted that he had used Queensland LNP fundraising body the Fadden Forum to secretly provide $60,000 to candidates in the 2016 Gold Coast Council election and that Sunland lobbyist Simone Holzapfel had donated $100,000 to the Fadden Forum. Holzapfel