A LAW firm acting for Greg Sheppard has written to an Australian television station which aired a secretly-filmed footage of an interview “to retract the publication in the same manner and place as first published”.
Lawyer Peter Lowing, of Leahy Lewin Lowing Sullivan Lawyers, said they were also making a formal complaint to PNG authorities on behalf of Sheppard.
“(We) shall be issuing proceedings against SBS seeking damages for defamation.” The SBS television station last Tuesday aired a story on its Dateline programme which included secretly-filmed footage of a meeting in Sheppard’s office in May 2014.
It was between him and an “unidentified agent provocateur posing as a potential investor in PNG”.
“It was alleged by SBS and now by other media that this footage shows our client engaging in some sort of illegal conduct,” he said.
“This footage does not support any of those allegations. At no point in the interview does our client advise this person to undertake illegal or improper conduct in PNG, or how to do so.”
Lowing said the entrapment and use of a secret recording device was specifically prohibited in PNG and it was a criminal offence to further publish such secretly obtained recordings.
He said both SBS and the agent provocateur had breached relevant provisions of the legislation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has asked Foreign Affairs Minister Rimbink Pato and Justice Minister Ano Pala “to engage with relevant Australian law enforcement authorities to investigate comments by two lawyers (Sheppard and Harvey Maladina) aired on SBS television”. The National/Pacific Flash