(Credit: Flickr/Ervins Strauhmanis)

The UK Mail Online unpublished an article and photos about a Romanian man not wanting to leave the UK after Brexit and claiming he had built mansions in Romania thanks to the money made in the UK.

Oddly, the Mail stood by its reporting and defended itself against the claims by providing notes, yet the newspaper still decided to remove the article to resolve the man’s complaint. iMediaEthics has written to the Mail to ask why.

The man, Isac Gheorghe, complained to press regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) over the July 5 article because he said the article and photos of him and Romanian houses contained errors, invaded his privacy, discriminated against him and harassed him, since he didn’t give the Mail an interview.

The article was headlined, ‘Exclusive — We’re NOT leaving!’ Romanians who built mansions back home with money earned in UK vow to STAY here after Brexit because ‘British people won’t serve kebabs or work in factories.'” A link to the article now goes to an error page.

The only error that Gheorghe listed, according to the IPSO ruling, related to the spelling of his name. “The accuracy issue was to do with reporting his name incorrectly (i.e. partly wrong name),” an IPSO spokesperson told iMediaEthics.

The Mail denied Gheorghe’s complaints, pointing to its reporter’s notes of a conversation with him. The Mail acknowledged Gheorghe wouldn’t give a “formal interview” but didn’t say his comments were off-the-record or unpublishable.

IPSO didn’t rule on the matter since the Mail offered to take the article off its website.