Donor Says BBC Corruption Claims Cost Him a Knighthood and a Peerage, High Court Told

A donor to both the Conservative Party and Reform UK lost the chance of a knighthood and a peerage because of BBC allegations that he was linked to corruption, the high court heard on Wednesday as his defamation case against the broadcaster began.

Mohamed Amersi is suing over a 2021 Panorama episode, titled Pandora Papers: Political Donors Exposed, and an accompanying BBC article that is still online. His barrister, Oliver Powell, told the court the coverage caused him "very serious harm".

The programme and article said there were strong grounds to suspect that, during his work for the Swedish telecoms company Telia, Amersi was involved in deals he knew or should have known were corrupt or involved corrupt payments. Powell said these claims went to the heart of his client's reputation and integrity.

Powell read out a witness statement from Amersi, who gave £25,000 to Reform UK last year and previously donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservatives. In it, Amersi said the publicity forced him to step back from what he described as his educational philanthropy. He said the "scandal cost me a knighthood and a peerage" and that Union Bancaire Privée of Switzerland closed his accounts.

The BBC is defending the material on the grounds of truth and public interest. In its written defence, it argued there was no evidence Amersi suffered serious reputational harm from either the programme or the article. It said "no corroborating documentary evidence to support Mr Amersi's assertions has been disclosed" and suggested his statement contained factual inaccuracies.

The 2021 reporting focused on Amersi's role as an adviser to Telia, then called TeliaSonera, in Uzbekistan, and on a $220m (£165m) payment made in January 2010 to a Gibraltar company called Takilant. Powell said the BBC's case is that the real beneficial owner of Takilant was Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's president, who is said to have had influence over the country's telecoms regulator. Amersi will say neither he nor Telia knew or suspected her ownership, and that there was no basis to say he should have known.

Powell said the BBC relies on admissions Telia made to the US Department of Justice in a 2017 deferred prosecution agreement. He described those admissions as untested "hearsay" that deserve "little or no weight". He also cited a legal review commissioned by Telia, which interviewed Amersi and was "unable to determine with any certainty that there was any legal or financial connection between Takilant and Gulnara Karimova".

The BBC has alleged that Telia "entered into a whole series of corrupt deals and payments for the benefit of its businesses in (variously) Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Nepal". Amersi says the broadcaster has produced no evidence of his knowledge of or involvement in corruption in any of those countries. He describes his Uzbekistan work as very limited, lasting fewer than six weeks in December 2009 and 2010, and says nothing contemporaneous shows he knew or should have known of Karimova's alleged ownership.

Powell told the court the BBC was offering "inference and generalised suspicion rather than any evidential foundation". Amersi claims the broadcaster seriously misled viewers and readers by suggesting he was centrally involved in paying a "bribe" to Karimova.

Amersi seeks damages, including aggravated damages, and an injunction to stop further publication of the statements he says are defamatory. He is due to give evidence for six days from 11 November. The trial continues.