UK daily apologises to IPCC chief Pachauri

Leading British newspaper Daily Telegraph on Friday apologised for publishing an article about United Nation's climate body chairman R K Pachauri, accusing him of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' firms.

The international publication had been running a campaign since last year against the chief of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who has strongly rubbished the allegations and even issued several legal notices threatening to sue it.

Pachauri's stand was vindicated on Saturday as the United Kingdom-based paper, in an apology posted on its website, said, "On December 20 last year we published an article about Dr Pachauri and his business interests".

"It was not intended to suggest that Dr Pachauri was corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC and we accept that KPMG found he had not made 'millions of dollars' in recent years," it said.

The newspaper further said, "We apologise to Dr Pachauri for any embarrassment caused."

Professional services company KPMG had examined the personal finances of Pachauri and had cleared him of any wrongdoing. Reacting to the development, Pachauri said, "I am glad that they (Telegraph) have finally acknowledged the truth."

In an article in December against Pachauri, who also heads Indian non-profit research organisation The Energy Research Institute, the paper said although Pachauri is often presented as a scientist, he is a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics and has no qualifications in climate science at all.

It also accused Pachauri of establishing "an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations."

Dismissing the allegations, Pachauri has been maintaining that the accusations were coming from the same group of people who had tried unsuccessfully to discredit the IPCC and the 'irrefutable science' on climate change by hacking the personal emails of some scientists.

"This is another attempt by the climate skeptics to discredit the IPCC. They now want to go after me and hope that it would serve their purpose," Pachauri had said then.