Microsoft’s Calibri font goes to court for new government corruption case

Microsoft’s Calibri font is being used as evidence in a government corruption case in Pakistan. The country’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, is being investigated by the Joint Investigative Team for corruption. Nawaz Sharif and his family members are being investigated for their illegal offshore properties found in the leaked Panama Papers from last year.

To fight against the allegations, Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz submitted copies of a couple of documents in the court. As it turns out, the documents could possibly be forged.

The Joint Investigative Team reported that the documents presented by Maryam Nawaz were using the Calibri font — which is a default font in many Windows applications from Microsoft. The documents were supposedly signed in 2006, but the Calibri font was only released to the general public in 2007. A statement from the Joint Investigate Team claims that the documents were forged in order to mislead the court:

“The report prepared by the UK based (Forensic Handwriting & Document Examiner_ proves, beyoned any doubt that presented documents by respondents in the Supreme Court and the documents presented to the JIT by Ms. Maryam Safdar were falsified to mislead the Court to believe that they were signed in 2006, whereas they could not have been typed in the font in that year it was not yet introduced.”

Unsurprisingly, Maryam Nawaz has already rejected all the claims made by the report from the country’s Joint Investigative Team on Twitter:

JIT report REJECTED. Every contradiction will not only be contested but decimated in SC. NOT a penny of public exchequer involved: PMLN

— Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) July 10, 2017

Ah well.