Anne Welsh Responds to a recent online article

Read the press statement below...

Ever since the highly-publicized report in Nigeria by Sahara Reporters New York in May 2015, I chose not to give an immediate public response to decide the direction that was most appropriate to me and my family. This was the case even though I was under pressure to "speak out" and to state my innocence.

When you are innocent of any wrong doing it is difficult and almost impossible to prove it in the court of social media. Where can there be evidence of a criminal act that never took place? The continued on-line harassment by a Sahara Reporters journalist who often refers to himself as Declan, is now at best strange and at worst an indication of escalation with the intent to harm.

No individual person, supposed journalist or other, should be allowed to operate in a way that is not factual and carries through with the public objective to destroy the reputation of an innocent person. The facts are irrefutable. I have never been part of a scheme, money laundering or otherwise, never been investigated by the police or Charity Commission.

Why would I be – I am totally innocent. I refuse to be a victim of online abuse. A criminal case was launched by the Metropolitan police in London with the goal to determine the facts of the conspiracy to defame me. The result was that the original video was deemed defamatory by Google and the YouTube UK video has been blocked. Anyone can view my truthful response to the Sahara Reporters attempts to defame me at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huqo-oy5svU. I am so determined to achieve justice.

I will go as far as possible to get the justice I deserve as I do not want anyone who is innocent to go through what I have experienced in the last year. As I have communicated to Declan previously, I would very much like my family and I to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of since 2014. Declan is also aware that I have severe sickle cell anemia and knows fully that stress, especially of this abusive nature, can and is doing physical harm.

Yet the ‘witch-hunt’ has continued as demonstrated by the fact that Sahara Reporters recorded our recent unsolicited telephone conversation without my consent. This online harassment must now stop. I have one last request. It would be helpful to me and to the interested community at large, if you would release the names and amounts of funds that are being paid to Sahara Reporters to continue this journey of harassment against me. Now there is a story.