The portal put up a statement of regret yesterday, noting that the earlier post – “A record of Untrue Stories – the Case of Clare Rewcastle”, in which the Sarawak-born British national was described as a fraudulent journalist, was not written by them and sourced from another website.
“The article contains a number of allegations about Ms Rewcastle, who complained to us after she read the article and informed us that the allegations are untrue. We did not write the article and were not involved in its writing and we do not have any relationship with its authors.
“We do not know who the authors are and do not endorse the article. We took the article down from our site after we received her complaint and we regret any distress caused,” the statement read.
This comes after Rewcastle-Brown’s lawyers issued a letter of demand, dated April 7 to Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who manages the site.
It is learned the article first appeared on a website called Open Source Investigations (OSI), which calls itself an investigative outfit that leans towards Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration.
Rewcastle-Brown’s Sarawak Report, which is banned in Malaysia, has written extensively about 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), as well as the RM2.6 billion “donation” found in Najib’s personal accounts.