Solicitor says Daily Mail attacked Imran Ali Yousaf on false grounds

• Imran Ali Yousaf's solicitor says defamation meaning trial's outcome was vindication of his client’s claim
• There is evidence available of Yousaf not knowing the source of money The Mail claims he received, he says 
• He says allegations were completely untrue and were designed to malign, harass and humiliate Yousaf

LONDON: Shahbaz Sharif’s son-in-law Imran Ali Yousaf's solicitor has said that the defamation meaning trial outcome was a vindication of his client’s claim against the Associated Newspapers Ltd’s (ANL) 2019 article that blamed him for money-laundering and corruption.

Barrister Waheed-ur-Rehman Miah, whose firm represents Imran Ali Yousaf, said that Mail on Sunday had claimed that his client received £1 million, which he knew were embezzled from funds of Pakistan's Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA).

However, "there is evidence available of Yousaf not knowing" the origin of funds and had no relation with Ikram Naveed, the former ERRA executive.

Read more: Shahbaz Sharif scores round one victory in defamation fight with Daily Mail  

Barrister Waheed said that Mail Online and Mail On Sunday said that Yousaf was a beneficiary of millions of pounds of laundered money as part of Shahbaz Sharif's wider family, but in court, Mail’s lawyer told the judge that the paper didn’t accuse Yousaf of money-laundering. The judge rejected the publication's arguments.

“The fact Justice Matthew Nickin determined that Yousaf has been defamed at the highest level, in ERRA part, and defamed at the second-highest level in the overall corruption allegations, is proof that Daily Mail’s arguments were found to be insufficient that it didn’t accuse him of corruption," he said.

The solicitor maintained that the allegations "were completely untrue and were designed to malign, harass and humiliate Yousaf".

Read more: Daily Mail pays millions in damages for defamatory article targeting British-Pakistani man

"The judgment on the meaning of the defamatory article in favour of Yousaf is the first step towards to full vindication of Yousaf's claim against the Daily Mail newspaper and compensation for the damage to his reputation."

Moreover, he said that the judge had set the "highest standard of proof" for the ANL to show that Yousaf did what he had been accused of — "the fact is Mail has no proof [as] the paper was fed a false story to target [my cliient] because he’s linked with a high profile political family.”

Barrister Waheed said David Rose claimed that Yousaf was a “right-hand man” of Naveed, but he has no proof because his client did not know who the man was.

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He said that Naveed, the former finance director of ERRA, struck a plea bargain deal with Pakistani authorities and admitted in 2018 that he stole money from ERRA's account — that had £54 million from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) — but that had nothing to do with Yousaf.

Yousuf is seeking more than half a million pounds in damages from the ANL as well as an injunction to get the article taken down and prevent any further publication. The Daily Mail publishers have said that the publication stands by its story and the claim will be defended vigorously.