A businessman suing the BBC for libel has corrected his witness statement regarding Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of the president of Uzbekistan, after cross-examination at the High Court.
Mohamed Amersi, 66, a Reform party donor, is suing the broadcaster over suggestions made in a Panorama documentary and a news article that during his work for Telia, a Swedish telecommunications company, he had been involved in corrupt deals. Amersi is seeking damages of up to £100,000, an injunction, and an order under s12 of the Defamation Act 2013. The BBC’s defence is of truth and publication in the public interest.
The Panorama documentary in 2021 centred around a payment of $220 million made by Telia, then known as TeliaSonera, to Takilant, a Gibraltar-based company.
At the start of the trial in late October, Amersi’s barrister, Oliver Powell of Outer Temple, said: 'The BBC’s case is that the real beneficial owner of Takilant was actually Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of the president of Uzbekistan. And it is their case that she is said to have had influence over the regulator of the Uzbek telecommunications sector.
'Mr Amersi will say that neither he nor Telia knew or suspected that Ms Karimova was the ultimate beneficial owner of Takilant and there was no basis for saying that he should have known.'
At the High Court, before Mrs Justice Tipples yesterday, Sonia Tolaney KC, for the BBC, suggested that Amersi had known Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s late president Islam Karimov, had an interest in a company, MCT, over which he was involved in doing a deal.
Tolaney pointed out that, in his witness statement, Amersi had said: 'I do not recall seeing Ms Karimova’s name in the MCT memorandum'.
In court, Tolaney pointed out that Karimova’s name was indeed in the memorandum of sale for MCT, which Amersi admitted ‘he had half written’.
Amersi responded: 'This is a mistake on my part.'
Tolaney continued: 'You don’t maintain that you don’t recall seeing Ms Karimova’s name in the MCT sales memorandum?'
Amersi said no and said that he had asked his lawyers to correct his witness statement.
Later during the cross-examination Amersi was asked about a claim in his witness statement that, during a conversation about the MCT deal, he had never even heard of Karimova.
Tolaney said: ‘You said, at that time [of a meeting], I didn’t even know [who Ms Karimova] was.’
Amersi replied: ‘I knew who she was, but not if she had any involvement with MCT.’ He clarified his witness statement to say, ‘I didn’t know if she had any interest [in MCT], not who she was,’ and apologised, saying ‘I’m sorry that’s my mistake.’
Amersi started working for Telia in 2007, but had already been involved in three deals before joining the business. Tolaney put to Amersi that one of these negotiations, he had advised Telia to bid $60m for an Uzbekistan telecoms company, Buztel.
Telia did not buy the firm, but Tolaney suggested the price on offer was ‘an outlier’ for a firm ‘with no significant business’. She argued it was ‘a bit odd that Buztel had this kind of value’ and that both Telia and the eventual purchaser of the business, VimpelCom, offered the same price.
Amersi said: 'This is how M&A works, Ms Tolaney…you pay for what the asset will be in five, ten years. You pay a price in the hope of future value.'
VimpelCom admitted in 2016 that the purchase of Buztel was part of a broader bribery scheme to enter the Uzbek telecommunications market. The admission was made through a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice.
When questioned over the $60 million price, Amersi said: 'We are corporate financiers, we know how to value businesses.'
Amersi was rebuked by the judge for speaking over Tolaney during her cross-examination.
The hearing continues.
