The English heir to the throne Prince William (40) is said to have received a “very large amount of money” in 2020 as part of a previously unpublished comparison with the News Group Newspapers newspaper publisher (NGN) from media mogul Rupert Murdoch (92). William is said to have previously sued the publisher for hacking his phone.
This emerges from court documents that were published as part of a lawsuit by his brother Prince Harry (38) against the publisher NGN, as reported by the British “Guardian”, among others. The Duke of Sussex has also accused the tabloids The Sun and News of the World of hacking his phone.
Court documents say Buckingham Palace allegedly negotiated a secret deal with NGN publishers “at some point before 2012”. As part of the deal, Princes Harry and William are said to have pledged to refrain from filing their own lawsuits against NGN publishers until other ongoing court cases over tapped phone calls by their newspapers have been resolved. Prince Harry and Prince William are said to have been promised apologies for this at a later date.
According to Harry, the royal family is said to have agreed to the deal to prevent another “tampongate”. In the 1990s, the newspaper “The Sun” published transcripts of a recorded telephone conversation between the then Prince Charles (74) and his current wife, Queen Camilla (75), which suggested that Charles, who was married at the time of the call, was having an affair.
According to Harry, the royal family wanted to prevent a repetition of this type of reporting at all costs. “The reason for this was to avoid the situation of a member of the royal family having to sit on the witness stand and retell certain details from private and highly sensitive voice messages,” the court documents said. The aim was to avert potential damage to the image of the palace and the royal family.
In the preliminary hearing that is currently being held before the London High Court, the NGN publisher wants to prevent a process with the argument that the plaintiff Prince Harry would make his complaint too late. According to “NBC”, Harry’s lawyer explained in this regard that his client would only now take legal action against the NGN publishers because of the said secret agreement. For this reason, Harry had to disclose both the deal as such and Prince Williams’ secret settlement.
As the “Guardian” further reports, News UK, the parent company of the publisher NGN, is said to have broken its side of the secret agreement when Prince Harry wanted to receive his own apology in 2017. As a result, the Duke of Sussex is said to have first sought a court hearing.
At the request of the British newspaper, Buckingham Palace is said to have announced through a spokesman that ongoing court proceedings would not be commented on. Kensington Palace is said not to have commented on the matter. News Group Newspapers issued a statement in court denying that there was a secret agreement between the Palace and the publisher.
As the “Guardian” continues to write, it has long been known that William and Harry’s phones have been tapped in the past. NGN publishers have already paid millions of pounds in settlements to settle over 1,000 illegal phone tapping cases. Harry accused the group’s tabloids of committing multiple unlawful acts from the mid-1990s through 2016.
In addition to his lawsuit against publishers of NGN, the Duke of Sussex has also sued publishers Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), publishers of the Mirror and Sunday Mirror, and publisher Associated Newspapers, publishers of the tabloids Daily Mail ‘ and ‘Mail on Sunday’, sued. In none of the court cases mentioned has there been a verdict so far.
