PANORAMA, the BBC’s flagship current affairs show, faces being sued for more than £1m by Britain’s richest doctor after a “biased and irresponsible” undercover investigation into his fertility clinics.

Mohamed Taranissi, a leading IVF expert who has helped mothers give birth to 2,300 babies in seven years, claims the programme made defamatory allegations about his techniques and has caused lasting damage to his professional reputation.

Last week Carter-Ruck, the libel lawyers, wrote to the BBC on behalf of Taranissi, signalling his intention to sue.

The doctor is seeking hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages, but the broadcaster will also have to foot his hefty legal costs if it loses the libel action. “We could be talking about an overall bill well in excess of £1m if the BBC decides to fight this all the way,” said an informed source.

Taranissi, 52, said: “If everybody presents me as the richest doctor [in Britain], earning all these millions, obviously anything that will come in compensation will have to match things like that.”

The legal wrangle is thought to be causing serious concern among BBC news executives, who used the IVF investigation to relaunch Panorama in its new Monday night slot on BBC1.

Although moving the programme from Sunday nights has added an extra 900,000 viewers, critics claim it has had to follow a more populist agenda to compete with Tonight with Trevor McDonald on ITV. It has also received heavyweight cross-promotion from other BBC outlets.

The Panorama investigation into Taranissi, broadcast in January, claimed that one of his central London clinics, the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre (ARGC), offered “unnecessary and unproven” treatment to an undercover reporter posing as a patient.

The show, which was fronted by Kate Silverton, the BBC Breakfast and News 24 presenter, alleged that a 26-year-old journalist was offered IVF treatment costing thousands of pounds despite neither her, nor her partner, having any history of fertility problems.

One of the therapies offered involved a blood transfusion of a concentrated mix of human antibodies that one independent expert suggested could harm an unborn child.

The programme claimed Taranissi was running a second clinic, the Reproductive Genetics Institute (RGI), without a licence and was sending his older and harder-to-treat patients there to maintain a high success rate at the ARGC.

Taranissi, an Egyptian whose wealth is estimated at £38m, denies any wrongdoing. His supporters claim the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the fertility watchdog, colluded with Panorama as part of a long-running “witch-hunt” to discredit him.

“The programme was biased and irresponsible,” Taranissi said. “I believe that Panorama had more information in their possession that was telling them that there was a different side and a different argument, but they chose not to use it. It’s not what I would have expected from the BBC.”

Taranissi claims that at least two other undercover reporters were sent to his clinics and given legitimate advice, but this was omitted by Panorama.

Police are now examining claims that the show’s researchers used fake GP referral letters to target Taranissi.

Officers from the Metropolitan police have taken a statement from Taranissi and are considering launching a formal investigation under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act. Using a “false instrument” carries a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.

This weekend it emerged that Lord Winston, a leading fertility expert, was so concerned about the prospect of legal action from Taranissi that he only agreed to appear on the programme if he was indemnified.

Winston later wrote to Sandy Smith, Panorama’s editor, accusing him of conducting a “trial by television” and letting the HFEA “off the hook”. “I think by focusing on Taranissi in this way, Panorama rather lost the plot,” he said.

“What I was concerned about was the adequacy of the regulatory authority in general and I repeatedly made that point to the researchers. I wasn’t misquoted or misrepresented, but I do think that the focus was wrong and certainly not the focus I expected to see.”

The IVF investigation generated 150 complaints to the BBC, many of which came from Taranissi’s former patients.

Cheryl Hudson, a research fellow at Oxford University who has given birth to two sons since undergoing treatment at the ARGC, said: “Panorama was completely biased and absolutely outrageous in its claims against Mr Taranissi as some kind of manipulative doctor exploiting patients.”

Taranissi has already launched legal proceedings against the HFEA, which has admitted advising him to file reports detailing treatments at both of his clinics through only one of his centres.

A full hearing challenging the legality of search warrants used by the watchdog to raid his clinics on the day that Panorama broadcast its findings will take place in July.

The programme is sticking by its story. A BBC spokesman said that fake GP referrals were “justified” in the context of the undercover investigation.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• TV bidding war starts over Olympics
• Sofas were larger than life in TV adverts
• Driver pays fine with wheelbarrow of pennies