British journalist, David Rose of Daily Mail, has once again denied receiving any lawsuit from former Punjab chief minister and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif against his story exposing alleged theft of earthquake relief funds.
“Hello Pakistani friends. A lot of you have been asking if Shehbaz Sharif has commenced a lawsuit against me and my newspaper yet. He hasn’t [sic],” he tweeted.
Resharing his July 14’s story, the journalist wrote, “Sources tell me that investigation by NAB [National Accountability Bureau] and the Asset Recovery Unit into allegations against Shahbaz Sharif have continued with some vigour since my article was published. This may explain why he hasn’t filed a lawsuit: they have been keeping him busy.”
Shehbaz had earlier claimed having served a legal notice to the newspaper on July 26, alleging it was a “politically motived” report. He had also shared a copy of the legal notice on Twitter.
The tweets had come after a series of indirect spats between Shehbaz and Rose over Twitter following the latter’s news story according to which British authorities had decided to initiate a probe into the funds worth millions of Pounds that were sent to the Shehbaz-led Punjab government as aid for quake victims.
The Daily Mail UK report claimed that the paper was given exclusive access to some of the results of a high-level probe ordered by the government of Pakistan and it was also able to interview key witnesses held on remand.
One of the witnesses had claimed that he laundered millions on behalf of Shehbaz’s family from a nondescript office in Birmingham without attracting suspicion from Britain’s financial regulators.
The paper had also alleged that Shehbaz and his family were embezzling tens of millions of pounds of public money and laundering it in Britain.
