Romania’s anti-corruption unit says broadcaster’s segment featuring Stuart Ramsay at alleged arms deal was ‘scenario made up by British journalists’

Sky News has said it stands by a report on gun running in Romania after officials from the country’s anti-corruption unit claimed the broadcaster’s journalists faked a meeting with arms dealers.

The Romanian Directorate for the Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism (Diicot) said on Wednesday it had arrested a number of people thought to be involved in staging an arms deal featured in the programme, which was broadcast this weekend.

In an appearance on Romanian TV, Diicot chief prosecutor Daniel Horodniceanu said the investigation was “a scenario made up by British journalists”.

According to local media, those arrested claimed they had been given a script by Sky chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, provided with equipment and paid €2,000 (£1,700).

It said one of those involved, Aurelian Szanto, had been hired while working in London to set up the meet, but he claimed he had been tricked into taking part under the understanding that the filming would be presented as fictional.

Szanto told Romanian national news agency AgerPress: “The person in question told me it was a documentary that the Sky trust would make in Europe about these arms smuggling acts, to inform the population, so that it may be vigilant and look for suspects.

“They told me the following: we want to have two people presenting us some arms and through the presentation of the respective weapons to draw the attention on how these sales are done.”

Diicot also said the arms featured in the broadcast were legally owned and used for hunting, and were very different from the AK47 assault rifles Sky claimed were on offer.

The Romanian Ambassador to the UK, Dan Mihalache told Romanian press that the story was about “fake news” but that it should not be allowed to affect relations between Romania and the UK.

However, Ramsay on Wednesday afternoon hinted that the response was down to the embarrassment the story had caused the Romanian government.

Stuart Ramsay (@ramsaysky) Ha! Calm down everyone. Story is true. Nobody paid. Nobody scripted. Weapons real. Arrests happening. Govt embarrassed. Deal with it.

In a blogpost published on Sunday about the programme titled “Gang Selling AK-47s ‘Bound for Western Europe’”, Ramsay wrote that: “After months of negotiation with a Romanian gang, Sky News was directed to a remote part of the country for a meeting with gang members prepared to show us what they could supply.

“There is no subterfuge here. They knew we were a news organisation wanting to illustrate how getting a weapon is relatively easy and they believed we were going to buy them.”

A Sky spokeswoman said: “Stuart Ramsay is one of our most experienced and tenacious journalists with a long history of delivering major stories from around the world. He’s delivered a robust report on gun-dealing in Romania and Sky News fully stands by the story.”