Observer Report London
The lawyer for the Associated Newspapers, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday said that “actual detailed evidence against Shahbaz Sharif” regarding corruption and a money-laundering allegation is “pretty limited and based on assumptions” that he “lives in a palace” in Lahore.
The lawyer, Andrew Caldecott QC, was arguing before London High Court’s Justice Matthew Nicklin in the virtual meaning hearing during the Shahbaz Sharif vs Daily Mail defamation case.
Caldecott said that Daily Mail “conceded” that there were no money-laundering allegations against Shehbaz and his family members — and that the element of “political witch hunt” cannot be ruled out — but this doesn’t mean that there was no money-laundering as the paper alleges in David Rose’s article.
Justice Nicklin remarked at the start of the hearing that he has read the material put before him by both Daily Mail and Shahbaz Sharif’s lawyers.
However, Justice Nicklin said he was aware that there were proceedings in Pakistan involving Shahbaz Sharif but he had “deliberately read nothing about proceedings in Pakistan because that’s not for me to read or know. I would rather not know what’s happening in Pakistan.”
