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Published : 04 Jul 2018, 03:16 AM
The report “is an extreme exaggeration of events and a deliberate caricature of the facts of the matter”, he claims.
The owner of the award-winning The Raj Restaurant and his wife Anwara have been barred from the position of company director for seven years after racking up a £229,000 tax debt, according to the recent report.
The ‘Curry King’ reportedly failed to keep accounts for The Raj restaurant in Edinburgh.
Miah, 59, faces the possibility that he will be stripped of his MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire), the threat of criminal proceedings, a fine, and up to three months of jail time, the Evening News reported.
“The report is riddled with misleading statements and unwarranted implications,” Miah, who was awarded the prestigious award at the Queen’s Birthday Honours List last year for services to charity and the hospitality industry, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Edinburgh Evening News claim that “this was a criminal trial is false. This was actually a civil case”, according to the statement.
The report “then builds on that misrepresentation by melodramatically stating that I could face jail time and lose my MBE award. This is FALSE”, Miah said.
“It is a blatant attempt to publicly shame me in an effort to get clicks for their article,” he added.
The Evening News claim that he would not give them a comment about their article was false too, Miah said in the statement.
“They made no genuine attempts to seek my point of view and to allow me the opportunity to rebut their statements.
“Another example of the sloppy attitude of The Edinburgh Evening News was their use of a decades old photograph of me which they dramatically splashed in large dimension alongside the text of their article. If they can’t be bothered with accuracy of the images they use, how can we trust the accuracy of their text?” he asked
“The Edinburgh Evening News is making my routine civil case a cause célèbre, and they are exploiting my good name solely for clicks online etc. This is not about public interest. Many other businesses have undergone similar proceedings following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 without such glaring publicity from the media.”
“My civil case has been a matter of public record since 2008- TEN YEARS- yet, The Edinburgh Evening News have not once, in that time, reported on these proceedings until well after this case was concluded in February 2018. If this was all about public service, why was there such an absence of reporting until last Friday?” Miah asked.
“It seems to me that this was all about an opportunistic attempt to exploit a highly public figure solely for their commercial interest,” he said.
He concluded his statement saying, “This case was closed months ago to the satisfaction of all parties involved. It is history; it has no bearing on my future business; lessons have been learned which will only make me and my business relationships stronger as we move forward, and I retain the full confidence of my business partners and colleagues.”
