Shehbaz sues Daily Mail, reporter David Rose over earthquake funds story

F.P. Report

LONDON: Leader of Opposition in National Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday filed a defamation suit against British newspaper Daily Mail and journalist David Rose in the London High Court for publishing a “fabricated and defamatory” report against him in July last year.

Addressing a press conference flanked by his lawyers Alasdair Pepper and Antonia Foster in London on Thursday, he said that defamation claim has been initiated at the London High Court’s Queen’s Bench Division against defendants DMGT and David Rose, author of the story.

Shehbaz’s counsel Alasdair Pepper confirmed that Mail Publications are in receipt of the claim form.

The PML-N president said that the allegations leveled against him were baseless. “The article of the British journalist David was part of a campaign launched against the PML-N for political purposes,” he said.

“I think that there is a nexus between Niazi and the NAB. He had to face a defeat when he tried to get my bail cancelled from the court,” he added.

The PML-N president alleged that the Daily Mail story was a part of a defamation drive lodged against on the behest of Prime Minister Imran Khan. He said that the prime minister resorted to character assassination of his political rival what he said through the so-called accountability.

In July last year, a story published in the Daily Mail claimed that the opposition leader had embezzled funds provided by UK s Department for International Development (DFID) for the rehabilitation of the 2005 earthquake.

According to the writer, a confidential investigation report, seen by the Daily Mail, says the family was worth just £150,000 in 2003 but by 2018 their total assets had grown to about £200 million. Among other properties, Shahbaz owns a 53,000 sq ft palace in Lahore, which has its own large security force.

According to the report, the family’s legitimate income sources could not account for their riches. The money, the report says, was channelled from abroad – via several elaborate money-laundering schemes, in which Britain played a central role.

The report claims laundered payments were made to Shahbaz’s children, his wife and his son-in-law Ali Imran. But it adds that Shahbaz ‘was the principal beneficiary of this money-laundering enterprise, by way of spending, acquisition of properties and their expansion into palatial houses where he lived.’

One of the most audacious schemes was said to be focused on Birmingham. The report lists 202 ‘personal remittances’ from the UK and the United Arab Emirates into the bank accounts of Shahbaz’s wife, two sons and two daughters.