A judge yesterday lifted an order banning The Times from publishing a photograph of a high-powered executive who is involved in a joint High Court action with the marketing tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell.

Mr Justice Eady lifted an ex parte order granted on Monday that had prevented The Times from publishing a picture of Daniela Weber, with whom Sir Martin had a personal relationship.

The picture, taken by a Times photographer, shows Ms Weber, 44, who is Swiss, before she began her evidence in private yesterday to the High Court in London via a video link from Milan.

The diminutive Sir Martin, 62, and Ms Weber had been labelled “the mad dwarf and the nympho schizo” by Marco Benatti, a former Italian colleague, after the tycoon had sacked him.

The court has been told that Mr Benatti had previously enjoyed a “close friendship” with Ms Weber before she began a personal relationship with Sir Martin, amid a spectacular falling-out that occurred between the two men.

The judge held, after a 90-minute hearing in private, that there was no basis on which The Times should be prevented from publishing a photograph of someone who was a witness in court proceedings.

Sir Martin, chief executive of the WPP marketing group, which is worth £7.5 billion, is suing Mr Benatti, founder of the Italian media company FullSix, and Marco Tinelli, its chief executive, over an internet hate campaign that followed his termination of their contract with WPP in Italy.

He and Ms Weber are also suing for invasion of privacy over the publication of a “vicious” image of them that had been disseminated on the internet.

The press is not allowed to report details of the privacy action and had to leave court throughout the evidence being given by Ms Weber.

Only the defamation action, which concerns a “host” of libellous claims on a series of internet blogs that were allegedly posted by the Italian defendants, can be reported.

Sir Martin, who two years ago paid a £29 million divorce settlement to his wife, Sandra, to whom he was married for 32 years, is reputed to have a personal fortune of up to £100 million.

Ms Weber, who became chief operating officer in Italy for the WPP group before the men were dismissed, was also referred to in internet blogs as his “hot lover” – part of the libel case.

Ms Weber had worked for Mr Benatti since her student days in Verona, more than 20 years earlier. By 2005 she had become a director of FullSix, in which WPP had a share of just over 20 per cent. But by the end of the year, relations between her and Mr Benatti had crumbled.

Ms Weber, the judge has been told, believed that it was because she had blocked some of Mr Benatti’s proposals, believing that they were too extravagant.

In January last year Sir Martin terminated Mr Benatti’s consultancy as country manager for WPP in Italy.

In the witness box last week Sir Martin said that, in addition to being described as a ruthless Mafia don, he had been accused of criminal fraud, deception and money laundering by the Italians and of allowing subordinates to go to prison to cover up for criminal activities.

Lawyers for Sir Martin approached Google and appealed successfully for an offensive weblog to be closed, but two months later the second of three such blogs was posted, which said: “Don’t mess with Don Martino”.

The defendants, who deny libel and breach of privacy, do not seek to justify the libels but deny that they were responsible for disseminating the blogs or privacy-infringing e-mails.

The hearing resumes today.

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