Prince Harry has made public another royal secret that is likely to aggravate Prince William, alleging that his estranged older brother received a “very large sum” of money when he settled a phone-hacking claim against Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper group in 2020.
Harry’s attorneys have suggested that the Duke of Sussex was left out of this kind of settlement because he was discouraged from pursuing legal action against the News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, the BBC reported. Harry’s attorneys have said the newspapers struck a “secret agreement” with officials at Buckingham Palace in how royal family would pursue legal claims, BBC also reported.
Harry’s latest allegations about how he was apparently sidelined by a palace decision that apparently benefited his brother have come in court documents that Harry’s lawyers have filed in the High Court of Justice in London, as part of his lawsuit against NGN. The documents were filed as part of a three-day hearing to determine whether his lawsuit can go to trial. The documents don’t disclose the amount of money William received in the settlement or what specific action the settlement is related to.
Harry is one of several high-profile figures who are suing NGN over unlawful information gathering that he alleges goes back as early as 1994 to as recently as 2016.
Harry alleges that he was a victim of voicemail hacking and that private investigators were hired to illegally gather information about his life. In a written witness statement, Harry said the alleged voicemail interception “affected every area of my life,” Sky News reported.
“It created a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships,” Harry said. “I would become immediately suspicious of anyone that was named in a story about me, or anyone who would benefit from that story. I felt that I couldn’t trust anybody, which was an awful feeling for me especially at such a young age.”
According to Harry’s witness statement, he first became aware of the alleged “secret agreement” between NGN and Buckingham Palace in 2012. That’s when he learned that royal staff were starting legal action for phone hacking — and he believed he and his brother had been personally targeted, too, BBC said. But when the brothers consulted officials or the Royal Family’s top solicitor, he said they were told that they could not begin their own legal action.
Harry said courtiers were “incredibly nervous” about a repeat of the damaging disclosure of an intimate phone call between his father, King Charles III, and Queen Camilla, which was intercepted and published at a time when Charles was still married to Diana.
The reason Harry said he and William were discouraged from pursuing legal action is that the royal family wanted to avoid a situation in which a member “would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly-sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted,” BBC reported. Harry subsequently learned that William apparently pursued a claim against NGN, which was recently settled “behind the scenes,” his attorney, David Sherborne, said, Sky News reported.
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Entertainment News Click Here
