Prince Harry and Elton John are among the six public figures who sued the publisher of the daily mailaccusing the British tabloid of illegally obtaining information about them, their lawyers said Thursday.
The group “became made aware of compelling and extremely distressing evidence that they had been victims … of serious privacy violations” by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the lawyers said.
Private detectives, illicit payments…
Along with Prince Harry and Elton John are also the singer’s husband, David Furnish, actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, as well as Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the young British man Stephen Lawrence, the victim of a racist murder in 1993.
The latter has also taken legal action against the group of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, which publishes in particular the tabloid Sun.
According to the lawyers of the six plaintiffs, ANL would have hired private detectives to intervene, in their car or at their home, on the six personalities.
They also claim that payments were made to police “with corrupt ties to private investigators” to obtain information, that medical data was “obtained through deception” and that bank accounts and financial information were made available “by illicit means and manipulation.”
“We totally and unequivocally refute these absurd libels that appear to be nothing more than a planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the headlines of the Email in the 30-year-old article wiretapping scandal,” ANL reacted.
Eavesdropping scandals
The British tabloid press was rocked some ten years ago by several wiretapping scandals since the early 2000s.
At the start of the affair in 2005, it involved wiretapping into the messaging services of Princes William and Harry’s collaborators, but the excitement had peaked in the summer of 2011 when the tabloid World News listened to the voicemail of a missing and eventually found dead schoolgirl, Milly Dowler.
The revelations had led to the closure of the Sunday tabloid debacle of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who had paid two million pounds to Milly Dowler’s family in an amicable settlement.
While many personalities have taken tabloids to court after being intercepted, this is the first time such lawsuits have been directed at the publisher of the daily mail.
Source: BFM TV
