Former reporter of the daily Cumhuriyet Pelin Ünker has been sentenced to 1 year, 1 month and 15 days in prison and fined 8 thousand 860 TL because of the stories that she wrote about the then Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s and his sons’ companies in Malta. Lawyers of journalist have appealed to the decision and the court decided to reverse the judgement due to four-month statute of limitations.

The final hearing of former reporter of Cumhuriyet newspaper Pelin Ünker, against whom a lawsuit was filed upon the criminal complaint of the then Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Berat Albayrak and his brother Serhat Albayrak for having reported on Paradise Papers, was held at the İstanbul 2nd Penal Court of First Instance on March 28.

After the news articles “Offshore Brothers” and “Energy Minister Albayrak and His Brother Also Preferred Malta for Some Time” were published on Cumhuriyet, Berat Albayrak and his brother Serhat Albayrak filed a criminal complaint against Ünker for “defamation through media.”

Announcing its verdict after the break, the court board took the four-month statute of limitations specified in the Article 26/2 of the Press Law into consideration and ruled that the criminal case filed against Ünker shall be dismissed on the ground that it was not filed within the stipulated period.