ICIJ didn’t issue apology to government: director

ISLAMABAD: Gerard Ryle, director of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Thursday denied the news reports that the global network mistakenly mentioned the name of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in its news stories.

“We have not made any public statement in regard to this at all. The prime minister’s name was not mistakenly mentioned in the story,” he said while speaking in Samaa’s programme “Nadeem Malik Live”.

Declaring the news reports as “wildly misleading”, Ryle also dismissed the claim that ICIJ tendered an apology over the issue.

“No we have not issued an apology. I have been reading those news stories, they are wildly misleading” the ICIJ director said.

When asked to comment if the ICIJ said the prime minister is controlling the off shore properties registered on the names of his sons and daughters, Gerard said: “I am not saying that at all…that’s not we are saying, all I’m saying is that the public interest here is the children have companies that are linked to property in London”.

When asked as to what exactly ICIJ is doing to contradict the news story, he said: “We have not issue an apology, we have not issued any statement. The only thing we have done is just updated the news story to reflect the fact more clearly that the companies are owned by the children of the prime minister.

The ICIJ director said that they contacted the families whose names were mentioned in the documents to get their comments on the issue.

“We have gone to the family for comments, if they wish to comment. No one can dispute the facts as the documents are internal records of the company Mossack Fonseca in Panama that were used to set up their off shore companies,” he added. –Samaa