A former Tory donor suffered “serious harm” to his reputation when the BBC published allegations that he was involved in a corruption scandal, the High Court has been told.
Mohamed Amersi is suing the corporation over allegations made in a Panorama documentary and an online article published in October 2021, both of which alleged he was involved in deals made by a company he advised that he knew were corrupt or involved corrupt payments.
Amersi denies the allegations and is suing the BBC for libel, seeking damages and an injunction preventing it from repeating the allegations.
On the first day of trial on Wednesday, Amersi’s lawyers told the High Court that those who read or watched the publications “would have thought very much less” of him as a result, and that the BBC “seriously misled” its audience.
Oliver Powell KC, for the businessman, said in court that the publications had a “very real impact on his standing in the eyes of readers and viewers”.
The BBC is defending the claim, arguing that Amersi has not shown the claims caused serious harm to his reputation and that the allegations are true, telling the court that he “knew full well the reality of what was going on”.
Amersi, who has previously donated to the Tories and Reform, attended court on Wednesday and is due to give evidence for six days next month.
He began his career as a barrister and solicitor before moving to the telecommunications industry, working as an adviser for Scandinavian telecommunications company Telia between 2007 and 2013.
Powell said in written submissions that in 2007, before Amersi began working with the firm, Telia sold around a quarter of its ownership of another firm to an Gibraltar-based company, Takilant.
But the BBC article, which remains online, said that in 2010, Telia agreed to buy most of the stock back, paying Takilant $220m (£165m).
It continues that Takilant was controlled by Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the then-president of Uzbekistan, who had “influence” with the Uzbek telecommunications regulator.
The article also said that the US Department of Justice, which later brought a criminal case against Telia and some of its officials, but not Amersi, described the payment as a “bribe” so it could continue its business in Uzbekistan.
But in written submissions, Powell said that the BBC’s evidence “does not even come close to establishing a corrupt payment” and that the corporation “cannot make good its defence based on unfounded inference, suspicion, association or hindsight”.
He said: “There is no contemporaneous evidence whatsoever that a bribe or corrupt payment was made to any public official or a person capable of conferring a benefit in respect of any transactions in which Mr Amersi was involved.”
The barrister continued that no evidence suggested that Amersi “knew or should have known that Takilant was secretly owned, as the BBC contends, by Karimova”, and that while he advised Telia on the terms of the agreement, he did not “handle negotiations”.
Powell said: “The BBC seriously misled its readers and viewers by suggesting that Mr Amersi had been centrally involved in the payment of a ‘bribe’ to Karimova.”
He also said: “It remains entirely unclear how the Panorama team, even with its ‘collective belief’, satisfied themselves that Mr Amersi knew or should have known that the deals he was involved in were corrupt or involved corrupt payments.”
Sonia Tolaney KC, for the BBC, said in written submissions that Amersi had not claimed that “any identifiable harm actually occurred to his reputation in consequence of the publications, and despite five years having passed”.
She continued that this was enough to dismiss the claim, but also that the allegations in the publications were true.
The barrister told the court that there were “strong grounds to suspect that Amersi knew, or should have known,” that the 2010 deal, as well as other deals made by Telia in Kazakhstan and Nepal, was corrupt or involved corrupt payments,
She said: “As the contemporaneous documents reveal, for many of the relevant deals and payments it was Mr Amersi himself who acted as the key liaison point with Telia’s counterparty.
“The centrality of his role, his own self-professed expertise in emerging market telecoms, and, among other things, the revealing contents of his contemporaneous correspondence demonstrate not just that there are strong grounds to suspect that Mr Amersi knew or should have known that the deals and payments were corrupt, but in fact that he knew full well the reality of what was going on.”
The trial before Mrs Justice Tipples is due to conclude in December.
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