SLAPP Censorship - Part 45 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley Cases Inherently the Same, Their Legal Team Can Barely Even Distinguish (Full Timeline)

Older: Solicitors in UK warned not to act as ‘hired guns’ to silence critics of super-rich | UK House of Lords Recognises the SLAPP Issue in the UK and EFF Pursues "Bill (That) Could Put A Stop To Censorship By Lawsuit" in the US
In the last part we showed that the "million-dollar men" Garrett and Graveley were recycling each other's claims. In 2024 both of them filed lawsuits and Garrett has already admitted to me (after he swore on the Bible he affirmed what he previously denied) that he spoke about this to Graveley - with evidence made public - before he officially "joined forces". Months before this legally-significant admission their legal team repeatedly lied to several judges and defamed me repeatedly, too. At the trial, Garrett also openly admitted many other things that embarrassed him (he clearly felt hurt and traumatised) and months earlier he publicly said that third parties were funding the litigation, set aside Graveley being on Microsoft's payroll at the time of his arrest. No matter how an outsider may look at it, it does not look good; it looks really vicious and ugly, more so as Garrett and Graveley are both Americans who stuff the docket in another continent, seeking "revenge" "save as to costs" [1, 2] against a blogger and even the blogger's wife while they themselves have serious issues with women (Graveley was arrested for strangling women and Garrett is repeatedly being called "rapist" by his own spouse this year).
Last summer I sat down and wrote a chronology of how it all began in 2021 [1, 2, 3] after I had defended Free software and exposed scandals at Microsoft GitHub (which at the time was the platform used to defame the founder/father of Free software).
The full chronology can be found below (unaltered), predating Garrett's admission under sworn oath 3 months later. This is tag-teaming by Americans, in effect gaming the legal system in another continent.
Appendix V: Overlap in Communications Sent for the Garrett Case and for the Graveley Case
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A.The following chronology of events helps expose the overlaps, especially the pattern (and dates) of communications and publications in Techrights. This chronology is fairly complete and it draws attention to key dates, based on causality and time proximity. Names of people are included as there is a group of closely-tied (professionally and personally) people who have long sought to undermine Techrights and its authors, going back to 2007. Some of them may be sponsoring the lawsuits as they have a stake in the outcome and considerable wealth. They even publicly speak about this.
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B.25/10/2021: Techrights exposes a big scandal in the article series https://techrights.org/o/2021/10/25/github-series-outline/ (“A Story of Plagiarism and Likely Securities Fraud”).
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C.The publication is part of a very long and exclusive series, very long in the making (research and interviews); this particular part specifically implicates GitHub's CEO, Nat Friedman, and his best friend, Alex Graveley.
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D.The article receives plenty of exposure.
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E.In a nutshell, the article contains evidence from a source close to Mr. Graveley, which indicated that Mr. Graveley and Mr. Friedman had done something illegal at Microsoft – probably enough for dismissal of both of them if not criminal action against both of them. The details are in the article, which continues a week later (this series had weekly instalments). The matter is extremely sensitive at the time, for a whole plethora of reasons, and predates any other events, including the arrest of Mr. Graveley.
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F.It should be noted that Mr. Friedman was already very wary of Dr. Schestowitz and Techrights, which exposed a number of other scandals since the time Mr. Friedman worked at Novell (after it had acquired his company, Ximian). Mr. Friedman went out of his way to hide from Dr. Schestowitz’s scrutiny since 2006 or early 2007, back when Novell signed an abusive patent deal with Microsoft, after consultation with Friedman’s right-hand man, Miguel de Icaza (this was verified by high-level Novell insiders), a very close mutual friend of theirs and also a friend of Matthew Garrett. All those people are very closely connected, both personally and professionally (they take photos together; it’s in the public domain; Miguel de Icaza and Mr. Graveley were also special guests at Mr. Friedman’s overseas wedding and Mr. Friedman did a joint podcast with Mr. Graveley for a very long time). Following some of these publications Mr. Friedman tried very hard to distance himself from Mr. Graveley’s actions (this effort was documented by Techrights as well), but the Internet does not forget. There is abundant evidence online.
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G.There is a good basis or strong reasons to believe this publication, dated 25/10/2021, triggered all or most actions that followed, including the sudden, unexplained, short-notice statement that Nat Friedman would leave his job (a CEO at Microsoft’s GitHub) and then threatening letters sent to Roy (Dr. Schestowitz) by Matthew Garrett, who had already harassed Roy for over a decade and kept spying on Roy in search of unflattering material (he was watching Roy’s every action all day long for several years, sometimes trying to provoke Roy to get him to take the bait, or to trick people who know Roy into saying bad things about Roy).
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H.15/11/2021: Nat Friedman, Microsoft GitHub’s CEO, leaves his role (last day at the job). The sudden announcement of his departure overlapped the above-mentioned publication. As a reminder, Mr. Graveley is his “best friend”, according to close and discreet sources (including Miguel de Icaza). They both worked on the project that caused the company to be sued for $9,000,000,000 and their discussions over the telephone suggested they had also colluded to defraud Microsoft shareholders by creating a phony company, then acquiring it (Techrights covered this). It should be noted that Nat Friedman and Matthew Garrett have many mutual friends. They have long been professionally and personally connected.
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I.22/11/2021: Techrights covers the above issue again – with new and additional information - in https://techrights.org/o/2021/11/22/defrauding-microsoft-shareholders/ (“Nat Friedman, as GitHub CEO, Had a Plan of Defrauding Microsoft Shareholders”).
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J.Nobody challenges the accuracy of this article. The same is true for prior instalments. They have an impact.
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K.This reiterates and elaborates on what was published in Techrights shortly before Nat Friedman said he was leaving Microsoft, never explaining why (it was also a mystery to the press). There are good reasons to suspect a correlation between the above publications and the removals that followed (at Microsoft).
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L.23/11/2021: Only one day later, via E-mail, Matthew Garrett sends a preaction letter dated “Nov. 23 2021”. The threat made concerns an old tweet and despite the preaction letter being ignored he sends some more threats (also ignored) and never takes legal action.
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M.29/11/2021: 6 days pass. Mr. Graveley strangles a woman and gets arrested. There is no denying it; he too admits this (later) in his own Web site.
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N.Early December 2021: More communications from Matthew Garrett’s lawyers (not Brett Wilson LLP) get sent to Roy, again threatening legal action. Those were all empty threats. In 2024 Patron Law explained to Roy that those empty threats are actually a very big deal. It’s a repeat abuse of the legal system.
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O.2022: Mr. Graveley repeatedly begs Roy to remove articles about his arrest. He sends E-mails. He also makes several empty threats – those were never acted upon. Like Matthew Garrett’s lawyers, he even had a US attorney send messages to Roy. It was all bark, no bite.
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P.2022-2023: Matthew Garrett spends several years stalking Roy 24/7 over Techrights IRC (a 24/7, always-on communication network run by Techrights and administered by Roy) while defaming him online (mostly in social media) and even harassing his wife, among other people connected to Roy. Matthew Garrett became the first-ever and likely only person ever to get muted in the IRC network because of his abusive behaviour. Moreover, Matthew Garrett would later impersonate people in IRC in an effort to defame them. His behaviour was absolutely despicable and Roy repeatedly told Matthew Garrett that a lawsuit over Garrett’s own behaviour was feasible, but would not be pursued. Roy had better things to do than deal with online trolls in a courtroom.
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Q.Then, in late 2023, Matthew Garrett starts sending several threatening letters by E-mail to both Roy and to his wife, Rianne.
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R.In an act of sheer projection, the abuser pretended that somehow it was him, the abuser, who deserved sympathy and was the victim. After stalking and defaming Roy for a number of years, even sending empty threats to Roy, he decided to resume the threats.
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S.After those threatening letters are ignored, as usual, he publicly says he wants to find a lawyer to do something “funny” for a “reduced rate” (his own words!). He finds a lawyer to do this “funny” thing, so threatening letters get sent from Brett Wilson LLP on his behalf (it’s not even the law firm that he used in 2021! It had made empty threats using the other firm and failed to tell Brett Wilson LLP about that!).
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T.It should be noted that Mr. Garrett waited almost 3 months before filing the lawsuit (or about 2 months after the deadline set) and it happened almost on the exact same day Mr. Graveley and Mr. Friedman appeared together on stage, united and cheerful. There is photographic evidence of it. Mr. Graveley would later mention the Mr. Garrett case in his personal Web site. He knew all along.
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U.Brett Wilson LLP would later be used by Mr. Graveley, as soon as Matthew Garrett’s case not only reached an impasse but Mr. Garrett got sued in the UK High Court for his longstanding (years-old) harassment. The campaign of harassment against Roy goes back as much as 12+ years.
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V.The times of communication (E-mail messages) give away the strict parallels and coordination between Mr. Graveley, Mr. Garrett, and their facilitator, Brett Wilson LLP. Sometimes it would even seem like they lose track of who’s who. At this stage the matter was already escalated to Mr. Wilson himself (firm’s chief), based on metadata left inside the letters (they probably didn’t realise that this also revealed participation by staff members of staff outside of Brett Wilson LLP!). A vast proportion of the cases filed in 2024 by Brett Wilson LLP targeted Roy and his wife. It’s hard to ignore that and the strategies used in other cases, showing similarly abusive litigation, as stated by the Master in Dale Vince v Associated Newspapers in June 2025 (decision by Mr. Justice Swift, KB-2024-001820). The claim was brought forth by Brett Wilson LLP and showed tactical similarity to what Brett Wilson LLP had done to Roy and Rianne, not just in April but again in October. Mr. Justice Swift argued that Brett Wilson LLP had engaged in “abuse of process”. UK-GDPR was piggybacked for frivolous litigation because libel claims didn’t work and had never had merit. The docket was gamed in an effort to cause the other party, even if as affluent as Associated Newspapers, to capitulate.
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W.To be found below is a complete schedule of communication from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne Schestowitz and to Roy Schestowitz with proximity or overlaps illustrated and emphasised so as to show “tag-team” efforts to pressure the recipients into capitulation.
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X.Many times throughout the process (in both cases) they would attempt to offer a settlement unfavourable to the Defendant, which meant their real goal wasn’t to go to trial where claims can be judged based on merit. Their aim was sinister and a clear abuse of process or harassment by process. One case was misused in an effort to leverage control in the other. There is considerable overlap also in the Particulars of Claim, where 30-40% of the words are the same. Both were composed by the exact same barrister for the exact same lawyer, who now appears to be leaving Brett Wilson LLP. He was evasive about plenty of things, including where the funding for the lawsuits came from (the Security For Costs/SFC reply was almost like a joke). In recent months they just resorted to name-calling each time critical questions were asked of them. They seem to be exceedingly afraid of any kind of scrutiny and are always uncooperative when asked for basic transparency.
Communications’ sequence and dates
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1.08/02/2024, 14:03 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy and to Rianne regarding Garrett
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2.30/04/2024, 16:52 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy/Rianne regarding Garrett
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3.30/04/2024, 16:55 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy/Rianne regarding Garrett
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4.20/05/2024, 15:32 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy and to Rianne regarding Garrett
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5.[…]
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6.Many messages to Roy's and Rianne's legal representatives regarding Garrett. This went on between May and October 2024).
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7.Roy and to Rianne both sue Garrett for harassment in September 2024.
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8.08/10/2024 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy's and Rianne's legal representatives regarding Garrett
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9.22/10/2024 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy's and Rianne's legal representatives regarding Garrett
Only one day passes:
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10.23/10/2024, 15:33 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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11.23/10/2024, 15:33 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to lawyer not on file for Roy regarding Graveley (sent to Mark Lewis of Patron Law)
The timing and style suggest they brought in Graveley because the Garrett case had reached a catastrophic state (for Garrett); they needed some new ‘collateral’. It was as though Graveley was a “backup bargaining chip” parked nearby in ambush. They brought him into action when Garrett’s case was in trouble.
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12.20/11/2024 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to lawyer not on file for Roy regarding Graveley (sent to Mark Lewis of Patron Law)
One day passed:
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13.21/11/2024 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy's and Rianne's legal representatives regarding Garrett
Roy and Rianne became Litigants in Person in order to save costs in January 2025.
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14.16/01/2025, 09:32 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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15.16/01/2025, 09:32 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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16. 22/01/2025, 11:23 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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17.22/01/2025, 11:23 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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18. 27/01/2025, 11:30 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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19. 27/01/2025, 11:30 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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At this point Brett Wilson LLP failed to prevent Rianne and Roy from suing Garrett for his harassment, so they turn over to Graveley, resuscitating threats they had long abandoned (since October the previous year).
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20.31/01/2025, 16:36 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to lawyer not on file for Roy regarding Graveley
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21.More messages would be sent to this lawyer (not on file for Roy!) regarding Graveley, who had to tell them to stop doing this as it was inappropriate and probably professionally disallowed. What they basically did was, they worked around Roy to intimidate Roy via a person who wasn’t on file and was never on file. They contacted the lawyer in the Garrett case!
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22.11/02/2025, 17:21 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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23.18/02/2025, 17:00 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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24.10/03/2025, 11:59 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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25. All the above pertain to threats and also an effort to extort Roy. It was quite revealing, based on the timing, that they had “double-dipped” in order to increase pressure on Roy (especially in the former case).
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One week passes:
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26.17/03/2025, 14:57 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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27. 17/03/2025, 14:57 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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28. Then they’re back to Graveley:
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29. 20/03/2025, 16:23 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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30. Only a few business hours after the above they switch back to Garrett:
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31. 21/03/2025, 13:45 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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32. 21/03/2025, 13:46 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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33. 24/03/2025, 17:33 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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34. 24/03/2025, 17:33 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
Back to Graveley again:
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35. 27/03/2025, 09:41 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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36. A day later back to Garrett:
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37. 28/03/2025, 15:50 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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38. 28/03/2025, 16:58 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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39. 28/03/2025, 17:20 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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40. 28/03/2025, 17:20 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
Back to Graveley:
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41. 31/03/2025, 12:05 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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42. 01/04/2025, 11:17 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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43. 02/04/2025, 10:53 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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44. 09/05/2025, 15:45 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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45. 09/05/2025, 15:46 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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46. 16/05/2025, 15:50 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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47. 16/05/2025, 15:50 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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48. 16/05/2025, 15:50 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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49. 16/05/2025, 15:50 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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50. 23/05/2025, 14:52 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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51. 27/05/2025, 10:47 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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52. 27/05/2025, 10:46 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
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53. 04/06/2025, 11:01 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
2 days pass:
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54. 09/06/2025, 12:26 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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55. 09/06/2025, 12:26 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
A day later, back to Graveley:
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56. 10/06/2025, 16:40 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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57. 12/06/2025, 12:38 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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58. 13/06/2025, 17:59 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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59. 13/06/2025, 20:04 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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60. 16/06/2025, 09:51 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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61. 16/06/2025, 11:28 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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62. 18/06/2025, 15:54 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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63. 19/06/2025, 13:20 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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64. 19/06/2025, 14:12 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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65. 19/06/2025, 14:58 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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66. 23/06/2025, 15:06 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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67. 01/07/2025, 17:01 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Graveley
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68. 01/07/2025, 17:01 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Roy regarding Garrett
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69. 01/07/2025, 17:01 - Message from Brett Wilson LLP to Rianne regarding Garrett
Many later parts (in this series and other series) will link to the above appendix, hence we publicise it prior to them (there is a soft logical dependency). █
Previously in this series:

