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According to lawyers representing Prince Harry, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was directly involved in concealing illegal actions.
The Duke of Sussex, along with 40 others, is taking legal action against News Group Newspapers (NGN) for alleged illegal breaches of privacy from the mid-1990s until 2016, by its tabloids The Sun and the now-closed News of the World.
The attorneys allege that Mr. Murdoch, who is 93 years old, provided knowingly false statements, and that Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News UK, the British newspaper division of News Corp, lied and/or deliberately provided misleading information during her trial in 2014.
The claimants identified Will Lewis, a former News International executive now working as the publisher of the Washington Post, as being involved in the reported concealment, according to documents submitted to the High Court.
The case against NGN is due to go to a trial, lasting up to eight weeks, beginning in January. It is one of six legal battles the prince has involved himself in.
Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks have been charged with providing misleading testimony.
Attorneys have alleged that a computer storage device possessed by Ms. Brooks disappeared in May 2011 and that NGN provided falsified information to law enforcement to justify its absence.
Among the others making a claim are Guy Ritchie, a film director from Britain, Hugh Grant, an actor, and a few former high-ranking government officials. Also involved in a separate lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail are Doreen Lawrence, a campaigner, and the prince.
The attorneys representing them have formally requested that Judge Timothy Fancourt grant them permission to include additional accusations in their lawsuit against the corporation. These new allegations claim that top executives provided inaccurate testimony to both Parliament and a public investigation.
The lawyers of NGN are objecting to the proposed changes, stating that they are completely unnecessary and highly undesirable.
The company representative stated that the accusers had made accusations against both current and former NGN employees in a malicious and suspicious attempt to attack their credibility.
Prince Harry’s lawyers have accused Mr Murdoch over phone hacking
The spokesperson cautioned that these accusations are unrelated to attempts to compensate those affected by phone-hacking or illegal data collection.
The lawyers of the company stated that the new accusations, which involve 200 journalists, executives, and private investigators for the first time, were deemed to be unneeded, unfair, and unimportant.
Anthony Hudson, the lawyer representing NGN, stated in court that some individuals within the claimant group seem to be utilizing this document to advance their own agendas against the tabloid media.
In court documents, Mr. Hudson stated that the accusations regarding Ms. Brooks and others would essentially force NGN to retry criminal cases or conduct an additional investigation.
In 2011, NGN issued an apology for the phone-hacking carried out by journalists at the News of the World. As a result of public criticism, Mr. Murdoch made the decision to close the publication.
The NGN has resolved over 1,300 cases, however, the organization consistently denied accusations of misconduct by The Sun employees. After an eight-month trial in 2014, Ms. Brooks, a former editor of The Sun, was acquitted of charges of hacking and other offenses.
Rupert Murdoch used to be on the board of News International, which is now known as News UK. This is the main company that oversees News Group Newspapers.
David Sherborne, the attorney representing Harry and the other plaintiffs, informed the court that both Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Brooks were aware that NGN’s initial statement claiming that only “one rogue reporter” was responsible for illegal information-gathering was untrue.
According to the new accusations, they and other executives were untruthful when they made these statements, knowing them to be untrue at the time.
According to Mr Hudson, the revised statements were derived from “historical records.” In earlier versions, Mr Murdoch was briefly mentioned without any accusations against him.
Judge Fancourt had previously determined that Harry had no grounds to sue NGN for phone-hacking. He also deemed that Harry could not use a claimed “secret agreement” between the royal family and senior executives of Mr Murdoch as evidence.
Mr. Sherborne stated in written arguments that it had been claimed that Ms. Brooks’s computer’s hard drive was purposely concealed or destroyed in order to hide her and others’ awareness of misconduct at NGN.
The court was informed that additional documents featuring a 2021 statement from an IT engineer at NGN revealed that the hard drive had been confirmed to be present during an audit in January 2011, but was later discovered to be missing during a “routine inspection” in May of the same year.
According to Mr Hudson, the adjustments seem to have been intentionally made to garner attention, without actually moving the individual claims forward. NGN is anticipated to present the argument during a hearing this year that a preliminary trial should determine if the claims were filed too late.
The trial is scheduled to end on Friday, and Mr Justice Fancourt is anticipated to deliver a verdict at a later time.
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