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PeoplePrince Harry and Elton John attack ‘Daily Mail’ publisher
The king’s son and the singer are part of a group of six British personalities who claim to have been bugged. Their bank accounts were also allegedly hacked.
Singer Elton John and Prince Harry, along with four other British personalities, accuse the publisher of the “Daily Mail” of illegal practices against them.
Photomontage/AFP
Prince Harry and Elton John are among six public figures to sue the publisher of the Daily Mail, accusing the British tabloid of having obtained information about them illegally, their lawyers said on Thursday.
The group “became aware of irrefutable and extremely distressing evidence that they had been the victims (…) of gross breaches of privacy” by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the lawyers said. This is the first time that such lawsuits have targeted ANL, publisher of the “Daily Mail”.
Actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost have joined the lawsuit
Alongside 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 young Briton Stephen Lawrence victim of a racist murder in 1993. The latter has also taken legal action against the group of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, which notably publishes the tabloid “The Sun”.
According to the lawyers of the six plaintiffs, ANL would have employed private detectives to wiretap, in their car or at their home, the six personalities. They also claim that payments were made to police officers “with corrupt ties to private investigators” to obtain information, medical data was “obtained through deception” and bank accounts and financial information were accessible “by illicit means and manipulations”.
In the wake of the wiretapping scandal
“We totally and unequivocally refute these grotesque defamations which appear to be nothing more than a planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the headlines of the ‘Mail’ into the wiretapping scandal over 30-year-old articles,” reacted ANL.
The British tabloid press had been shaken about ten years ago by several scandals of illegal wiretapping practiced from the beginning of the 2000s. Princes William and Harry, but the emotion had peaked in the summer of 2011 when the tabloid “News of the World” had listened to the voicemail of a schoolgirl who disappeared and was finally found dead, Milly Dowler.
The revelations had led to the disaster closure of the Sunday tabloid of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who had paid two million pounds to the family of Milly Dowler in an amicable settlement.
(AFP)