Mohamed Amersi v British Broadcasting Corporation

Hearing date: 22 May 2025

Approved Judgment

This judgment was handed down by release to The National Archives on 30 May 2025 at 10.30am

The claimant sues the defendant in libel in respect of publications which conveyed the meaning set out below, broadly that there were strong grounds to suspect his involvement in corrupt deals. The defendant advances a defence of truth. There are three linked applications before the court: an application to strike out individual passages in the truth defence, an application to amend the truth defence, and an application to require the claimant to provide further information.

The background

The claimant was a businessman. In the 2000s and 2010s, he was involved in the telecommunications industry in emerging markets in ex-Soviet and Eurasian states. This included work undertaken between 2007 and 2013 with Telia, a large multinational Swedish-Finnish telecoms company. That work included, on the claimant's account, scoping new strategic opportunities, advising on transactions and assisting in their execution. In 2012, Telia engaged Norton Rose Fulbright LLP (“NRF”) to undertake a review of some of its operations. In February 2013, Telia's CEO resigned following allegations of corruption in respect of Telia's operations in Uzbekistan. The claimant and Telia agreed not to continue working together on the same terms as previously.

On 4 October 2021, the defendant published on its website an article entitled “Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal.” On the same day it broadcast an episode of Panorama entitled “Pandora Papers: Political Donors Exposed.”

The claimant issued his claim on 3 October 2022. There has been an energetic exchange of correspondence, statements of case and requests for further information. HHJ Lewis determined that the publications, in their natural and ordinary meaning, convey the following meaning which is defamatory of the claimant at common law:

“There are strong grounds for suspecting that, during his work for Telia, Mr Amersi had been involved in deals on its behalf which he knew or ought to have known were corrupt, or involved corrupt payments”

The defendant denies that the claimant has sustained serious harm and thus denies that the meaning is defamatory of him within the meaning of the Defamation Act 2013, section 1. It also advances defences of truth and public interest. The trial is listed to commence on 15 June 2026 with a provisional time estimate of 6 weeks.

The truth defence

It is common ground that to succeed in the truth defence, the defendant must prove:

(1) Specific Telia deals were corrupt or involved a corrupt payment.

(2) The claimant was involved in those deals.

(3) There are strong grounds to suspect that the claimant knew or ought to have known of the corruption.

The defendant's truth defence is based on the claimant's involvement in complex corporate telecoms transactions for Telia in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Nepal. It spans 99 paragraphs and 49 pages. The claimant's pleaded reply is similarly extensive. The issues on the applications before the court primarily concern the pleaded (or proposed amended pleaded) truth defence in respect of events in Kazakhstan. It is common ground that, at the relevant time, “Kazakhstan was subject to an autocratic regime with political power and the central economy under the control of a small elite, principally President Nazarbayev…, his family and close associates.” The defendant contends that there was pervasive corruption, including in the telecoms sector; that Karim Massimov (who was at material times Prime Minister) was a close associate of President Nazarbayev; that Aigul Nuriyeva was a prominent trusted proxy of Karim Massimov; that she nominally held telecoms assets on behalf of Mr Massimov to conceal his ownership and that the claimant knew this; and that the claimant was engaged by Telia to combat state hostility and to secure advantages that would not otherwise be available, to lobby (amongst others) politically connected or influential persons and/or their middlemen (who the defendant describes as “politically exposed persons”) and to enter into deals with politically exposed persons to assist Telia. It refers to this as “the hostile environment strategy”. The defendant contends that it is to be inferred that these deals were corrupt, and there were strong grounds to suspect the claimant knew or ought to have known they were corrupt.

The grounds for that contention involve a number of interlinking strands. One concerns the alleged fact that Telia paid more than the market price for certain deals, to the benefit of Karim Massimov and/or Aigul Nuriyeva. Thus, in one deal, the purchase price paid by Telia for a company, at just over US$1.5 billion, is said to be 50% higher than a subsequent listing price for that company in a public offering. All of this is set out in the existing truth defence. The claimant does not seek to strike out any of these core allegations and does not oppose amendments to some of the detail.

The controversy surrounds some of the additional interlinking strands in the truth defence from which, the defendant says, corruption is to be inferred. Specifically, the defendant seeks to rely on what it says are instances of the claimant providing “lavish entertainment” for politically exposed persons, and entering into “back to back” contracts, and agreeing to provide “lobbying activities”. The claimant says that the pleaded (and proposed amended) case in these respects is defective, that certain components of the case should be struck out and that, so far as the defendant is seeking permission to amend to advance the case, that should be refused. For its part, the defendant seeks an order requiring the claimant to provide further information in respect of his pleaded reply to the truth defence.

The legal framework

Strike out / amendment

Part of a defence may be struck out where it does not disclose reasonable grounds for defending the claim or it is an abuse of the court's process or it is otherwise likely to obstruct the just disposal of the proceedings, or it fails to comply with a practice direction: CPR 3.4(1), (2)(a)-(c).

The defendant may amend its defence with the court's permission: CPR 17.1(2)(b). In deciding whether to grant permission, the court applies a broad discretionary judgement in accordance with the overriding objective under CPR Part 1. If the proposed amendment would be liable to be struck out (for example if it does not disclose reasonable grounds for defending the claim or because it does not comply with a practice direction) then the court is unlikely to give permission.

To an extent, the application to amend and the application to strike out can be seen as opposite sides of the same coin. If a plea is good then it will survive an application to strike out and, everything else being equal, an amendment to advance the plea is likely to be permitted. If it is bad, then it is likely to be struck out and an amendment to advance the plea is likely to be refused. Sometimes, the position is not precisely symmetrical, particularly where an application to amend is made late in the proceedings. That is not the case here. The parties did not make substantive distinctions between the strike out and amendment applications, and they addressed the two applications compendiously. The underlying issues are whether the existing pleas, and the proposed amended pleas, are good or bad.

Plea of truth

It is a complete defence to a libel claim to show that the defamatory imputation conveyed by the published statement is substantially true: Defamation Act 2013, section 2(1). Where the defamatory imputation is that there are reasonable grounds to suspect a claimant of misconduct, the defendant must prove the primary facts which give rise to such reasonable grounds: Feyziyev v Radu [2019] EWHC 3372 (QB) per Whipple J at [11]. The fact that a third party believes a claimant is guilty of misconduct is irrelevant: Shah v Standard Chartered Bank [1999] QB 241 at 269G-H.

A defence must be verified by a statement of truth: CPR 22.1(1)(a). The defendant may thus not rely on matters which it does not believe to be true. It follows that it may not rely on matters that are unsupported by any evidence: Clarke v Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd [2002] 1 WLR 1731 per Patten J at [30].

A defendant relying on a truth defence must give details of the matters on which it relies: CPR PD 53B paragraph 4.3(2).

The obligation to particularise a plea of truth arises at the time of the defence – it is not open to a defendant to delay until after inspection of documents: Zierenberg v Labouchere [1893] 2 QB 183 per Lord Esher MR at 188 and Kay LJ at 189. A defendant can selectively rely on parts of a claimant's case in support of a defence of truth: Rothschild v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2011] EWHC 3462 (QB) per Tugendhat J at [46] – [48]. But a defendant cannot rely on a reply to an illegitimate defence in order to legitimise that defence by its own bootstraps: Miah v British Broadcasting Corporation [2018] EWHC 1054 (QB) per Warby J at [43].

The defendant may not plead allegations in support of a defence of truth unless they are relevant to and supportive of the defamatory meaning, or a reasonably necessary part of the narrative to that end: Hunt v Times...