ISLAMABAD/LONDON          -         United Kingdom based newspaper Daily Mail Thursday tendered an apology to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif besides withdrawing all baseless allegations of corruption against him. The UK based publication failed to prove the allegations levelled by its journalist David Rose in an article against Prime Minister Shehbaz. In his reaction, Minister for Interior Rana Sanaullah said that ‘another malicious propaganda has been exposed today.’ He wrote on Twitter that prime minister has now been declared an international “Sadiq and Amin”. In a statement, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb said that with this apology tendered by the Daily Mail, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has emerged triumphant before the world. Minister for Education and Professional Training Rana Tanveer Hussain wrote on Twitter that apology by Daily Mail to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is testimony to the fact that PTI used NAB as a political witch-hunt machine. The British publication The Mail on Sunday and news site Mail Online apologised to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for an “error” in an article it published on July 4, 2019 — in which it had accused the premier of “stealing British foreign aid money”. The said news story, written by investigative journalist David Rose, has now been removed from the publication’s website and other platforms. The article had claimed that Shehbaz had embezzled funds provided by UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) for the rehabilitation of the 2005 earthquake while he was chief minister of Punjab. It had quoted former accountability chief Shahzad Akbar and a few other individuals — none of whom were in an official position. The story was quickly refuted by the PML-N and the party had insisted that it was published “on the behest of [PTI Chairman] Imran Khan”. It was also rejected by DFID, which said the body’s “robust systems protected UK taxpayers from fraud”. In January 2020, the prime minister had filed a defamation claim against the “grotesque allegation” claiming a retraction, damages and an apology. In March this year, the newspaper submitted a 50-page response to Shehbaz’s defamation suit. In a clarification published on its website on Thursday, the British publication said: “In an article concerning Mr Shehbaz Sharif entitled ‘Did the family of Pakistani politician who has become the poster boy for British overseas aid STEAL funds meant for earthquake victims’ published on 14 July 2019 we reported on an investigation by Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau into Mr Sharif and suggested that the money under investigation included a not insubstantial sum of British public money that had been paid to the Punjab province in DFID grant aid.” It said that the premier “has never been accused by the National Accountability Bureau of any wrongdoing in relation to British public money or DFID grant aid”. “We are pleased to make this clear and apologise to Mr Sharif for this error,” Daily Mail added. The article, quoting investigators and a “confidential investigation report”, had claimed that the money “stolen” by the PML-N president, between the 2005 earthquake and 2012, came from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)-funded aid projects. “For years he was feted as a Third World poster boy by Britain’s Department for International Development, which poured more than £500 million of UK taxpayers’ money into his province in the form of aid,” the report had said. “Last year (2018), the head of DFID’s Pakistan office Joanna Rowley lauded his ‘dedication’.” “Yet, say investigators, all the time that DFID was heaping him and his government with praise and taxpayers’ cash, Shehbaz and his family were embezzling tens of millions of pounds of public money and laundering it in Britain,” it had claimed. “They are convinced that some of the allegedly stolen money came from DFID-funded aid projects.” The article had quoted Shehbaz’s son Suleman as denying the allegations against him and his family, saying they were the product of a ‘political witch-hunt’ ordered by Imran. “No allegation has been proven. There is no evidence of kickbacks,” he was quoted as saying in the report. Rose had said that The Mail was given “exclusive access” to some of the results of a high-level probe ordered by Imran, the then-prime minister. Following the formal apology by the British publication, PM Shehbaz Sharif lashed out at PTI chairman Imran Khan and his ‘minions’ over his character assassinate campaign. “I bow my head in humility before Allah (SWT) for my vindication. For [three] long years, Imran [and] his minions went to any limit to assassinate my character,” the prime minister said in a tweet hours after the publication published an apology note on its website.