Bungoma Senator Moses Wetangula who has sued British Broadcasting Corporation for linking with bribery allegations by British American Tobacco Company.
BY SAM ALFAN.
Bungoma Senator Moses Wetangula has filed a defamation suit against British Broadcasting Corporation for linking with bribery allegations by British American Tobacco Company.
The senator in an urgent application to the high court, says that he was defamed by BBC in its program me known as Panorama, which allegedly portrayed him has hiving solicited the purchase of an airline ticket to London for his wife.
The programme, he says revealed that the senator was corruptly involved in a corporate scandal in which BAT bribed him while he serving as minister for Trade during the retired President Daniel Arap Moi government.
The senator through senior counsel James Orengo, says that impugned story televised by BBC has continued to be in circulation through a multitude of electronic and print media to his prejudice.
Mr Orengo says that the article has been used as a basis of unjustified attacks against the senator by his political rivals and civil society.
“It is difficult for the senator to perform his duties and functions under the cloud of defamatory story which is causing him stress, anxiety and embarrassment” the lawyer says in court documents.
The lawyer argues that the story is and reports is false and malicious and cannot be true.
The news story and the Panorama program e presented by Richard Bilton under the title
” The Secret Bribes Big Tobacco” alleged that in July 2012a person known as Julie Adelie Owino had requested for a purchase of a business class plane ticket to London for the use of the senator’s wife and he could be ” Hosted at Globe House”- BAT’s London Headquarters.
The civil suit will be placed before vacation judge for direction as to the orders staying further publication of the alleged defamatory story against the senator linking him to bribery and corruption.
