LONDON: Sarah Pobereskin thanked Britain’s leading newspaper The Telegraph for issuing an unprecedented series of apologies and paying damages to her husband, Pakistani-American technology entrepreneur Zia Chishti, for incorrectly alleging that he had engaged in sexual misconduct.
Ms. Pobereskin spoke out after The Telegraph told The London High Court it apologised to Mr Chishti for alleging sexual misconduct by him towards a former employee of Afiniti Limited, Tatiana Spottiswoode. Ms. Pobereskin said that her husband’s decisive win against The Telegraph over the false allegations had established that Mr Chishti was unfairly accused.
Ms. Pobereskin, a graduate of Cambridge University and Harvard Business school, said: “The past three years have been very challenging. As a professional woman with a couple decades of a career behind me, I know what it means to be a woman in the workplace, and some of the challenges that entails. I wholeheartedly believe, as my husband does, that everyone deserves to enjoy work and life without harassment.
However, false accusations actually harm that mission, and sadly they only make women less likely to be believed.
“I am proud of my husband for taking the legal steps to clear his name. I am grateful to The Telegraph for the apology. These allegations caused us tremendous stress. We have two young children, and we were all put under huge stress due to a very unjust set of allegations. I look forward to continuing to rebuild our lives from here.”
Zia Chishti was the founder of Invisalign, which he led to a public listing on the NASDAQ in 2001; of The Resource Group, which he led to a public listing on the Pakistan Stock Exchange in 2003; and of Afiniti Limited. At the time he resigned from his positions in the The Resource Group and Afiniti, he led a business group that employed thousands of people worldwide.
He had sued the Telegraph Media Group (publisher of the Daily Telegraph and the Telegraph online) at the UK High Court over thirteen articles published by The Telegraph between November 2021 to February 2023 which reported on allegations made by Ms. Spottiswoode to the United States Congress. Mr. Chishti, whose full name is Muhammad Ziaullah Khan Chishti, fought a tough legal battle with the paper in London for over two years which involved disclosure and review of thousands of documents between Mr. Chishti and Ms. Spottiswoode.
The High Court proceedings drew on these extensive personal communications between Mr. Chishti and Ms. Spottiswoode, as well as hundreds of documents The Telegraph obtained through a subpoena of Ms. Spottiswoode’s attorneys in the United States. The communications included text messages in which Ms. Spottiswoode asked that she be “seduced and slowly undressed” by Mr. Chishti during the period in which she claimed she was being harassed.
The documents contained intimate conversations which showed that Ms. Spottiswoode repeatedly pursued Mr. Chishti with romantic interest during the periods in which she was claiming she was harassed and assaulted – and made her allegations public after Mr. Chishti had moved on to a different relationship and married his now-wife Ms. Pobereskin.
The U.K.’s oldest newspaper conceded that the allegations it published were false, misleading and defamatory. The Telegraph withdrew its position that its allegations were true and were in the public interest. It will run in perpetuity its subsequent apology on top of a record thirteen separate articles published online. The apology will also be published separately both in The Telegraph’s print and online editions. The Telegraph further agreed to pay Mr. Chishti substantial damages and legal costs.
The Telegraph acknowledged that Mr. Chishti has consistently disputed the allegations Ms. Spottiswoode made to the US Congress, which provided her with legal immunity against claims of defamation. The Telegraph also acknowledged that, although he sought to provide evidence to Congress to disprove the allegations made against him, Congress did not give him the opportunity to do so.
Renowned legal expert Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School commented: “Mr. Chishti’s settlement with The Telegraph further cements his position that the allegations against him are just that: allegations. I have advised Mr. Chishti and followed his case with interest. Last year, Mr. Chishti won the largest defamation award in Pakistani history after similarly challenging allegations related to Ms. Spottiswoode published by the Narratives Magazine.
With The Telegraph now withdrawing its defense of truth, it is increasingly clear that many in politics, business and the press rushed to judge Mr. Chishti simply on the allegations levelled against him, without giving him any opportunity to establish his innocence. The Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, for example, allowed his accuser a national stage to level her accusations without providing any opportunity to Mr. Chishti for rebuttal. Such conduct is an unfortunate feature of the present climate in which the principles of justice on which all nations are governed by the rule of law — due process and a strong presumption of innocence — have taken a back seat to virtue-signalling and ‘always believe the alleged victim’ thinking. By bringing legal proceedings, Mr. Chishti has bravely cleared his name and has helped move society towards a better balance between the rights of the accuser and the accused.”
Mr. Chishti’s counsel in his U.S. defamation case against Ms. Spottiswoode and her attorneys Ms. Nancy Smith and Mr. Michael Zweig is Ben Chew, who also represented Hollywood actor Johnny Depp in his landmark trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard. Ben Chew stated: “The Telegraph, one of the newspapers of record in the United Kingdom, has abandoned its defense of truth as to the Spottiswoode allegations and has now apologized to Mr. Chishti in open court. Following his decisive victory in a similar defamation case in Pakistan, where he obtained a record judgment, this constitutes further vindication for Mr. Chishti.”
