ISLAMABAD: British newspaper The Mail on Sunday and online news website Mail Online on Thursday apologized to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for publishing a 2019 report that said he was being investigated by Pakistani authorities for embezzling fund for earthquake victims.  

British tabloid Mail said in a July 14 article that Sharif, the president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, had embezzled funds provided by UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) for rehabilitation and reconstruction work after a devastating 2005 earthquake. 

A couple of months after the story was published, Sharif hired British law firm Carter-Ruck and filed a lawsuit against the British newspaper in January 2020. The firm, whose lawyers rank in the top tier of media, defamation and privacy lawyers in the United Kingdom, said the article was “gravely defamatory” of Sharif and contained false allegations.  

Sharif said he was appalled to read the story which he said accused him of “stealing British foreign aid money." The younger brother of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, he was then the chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.  

“We accept Mr Sharif has never been accused by the National Accountability Bureau of any wrongdoing in relation to British public money or DFID grant aid,” Mail Online wrote in its ‘Clarifications and Corrections’ section on the website.  

“We are pleased to make this clear and apologise to Mr Sharif for this error,” it added.  

"Disinformation & fake news have limited shelf life & truth is ultimate victor," Sharif wrote on Twitter in reaction to the apology.

The DFID had also rejected the contents of the article and said in a statement: “The UK’s financial support to ERRA [Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority] over this period was for payment by results – which means we only gave money once the agreed work, which was primarily focused on building schools, was completed, and the work audited and verified.”