Rupert Murdoch’s media business News Group Newspapers secretly paid Prince William a “very large sum of money” to quietly settle a phone-hacking claim, according to new court filings.
The prince of Wales received the previously undisclosed payment in 2020 after bringing a legal claim against the owner of the Sun and the News of the World.
Details of the settlement were given in legal documents submitted by his brother, Prince Harry, as part of his own legal battle with the publisher, which returns to the high court on Tuesday.
Prince Harry told the court his attempts to seek an apology from Mr Murdoch’s company over phone hacking were carried out with the approval of his grandmother the late queen Elizabeth II.
Prince Harry claims there was a secret agreement struck between royal family and “senior executives” at Mr Murdoch’s company at some point before 2012. As part of this supposed deal the princes would delay legal proceedings against the newspaper group in return for receiving an apology at a later date.
The prince said the royal family did this after being scarred by the “Tampongate” incident when the Sun obtained a recorded phone call between Prince Charles and Camilla while the couple were having an affair in the 1980s.
He said the royal family was desperate to avoid a repeat of this coverage. The filings state: “The reason for this was to avoid the situation where a member of the royal family would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted by [the News of the World royal reporter] Clive Goodman.
“The institution was incredibly nervous about this and wanted to avoid at all costs the sort of reputational damage that it had suffered in 1993 when the Sun and another tabloid had unlawfully obtained and published details of an intimate telephone conversation that took place between my father and stepmother in 1989, while he was still married to my mother.”
Prince Harry said News UK failed to uphold its side of the secret agreement when he sought this apology in 2017. He claims meetings were arranged involving Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of Murdoch’s News UK, and Robert Thomson, the global head of Mr Murdoch’s global News Corp business, but they went nowhere.
As a result, Prince Harry decided to launch legal proceedings against the publisher of the Sun and the News of the World.
He alleges the company targeted him with widespread illegal activity for much of his life, including hacking his voicemails and illegally obtaining personal information in the name of journalism.
Many of Prince Harry’s allegations relate to claims of illegal behaviour at the Sun while Ms Brooks was editor in the 2000s. News Group Newspapers insisted there is no secret agreement.
Although News UK has admitted phone hacking took place at the News of the World, it has always maintained no wrongdoing took place at the Sun. Ms Brooks was found not guilty of phone hacking at a criminal trial in 2014.
A spokesperson for the company said “the Sun does not accept liability or make any admissions to the allegations”, emphasising that many of Prince Harry’s claims dated back 20 years.
Mr Murdoch’s media empire is fighting hard to avoid being dragged into another high-profile court case, just weeks after paying more than $700 million (€635 million) to settle a US defamation case against Fox News.
Prince Harry is now fighting three separate legal battles against three media groups, all alleging illegal activities were used to target him in the name of journalism.
Last month he turned up in person for his case against the publisher of the Daily Mail, with a judge currently considering whether that case should be allowed to go to a full trial.
A separate trial against the publisher of the Mirror and Sunday Mirror is due to start in a fortnight, with the prince set to give evidence in the witness box.
If he is successful in this week’s hearing against Murdoch’s company then he is seeking damages in excess of £200,000 (€225,720), with a high-profile trial scheduled for January 2024. – The Guardian