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Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid newspaper business has apologized to Prince Harry and agreed to pay him “significant damages” after admitting for the first time that illegal activities took place at The Sun.
David Sherborne, the Duke of Sussex’s lawyer, told the High Court in London on Wednesday that News Group Newspapers had offered the prince a “full and unequivocal apology” for intruding into his private life over 15 years until in 2011.
The admissions are a blow to the Murdoch empire 13 years after it shut down the News of the World following a public outcry over the infamous redtop phone hacking on Sunday.
NGN has spent a decade denying any wrongdoing to The Sun, The News of the World’s daily companion, even as it paid more than £1bn in costs and settlements to cover almost all phone hacking claims against the company.
The publisher denied any wrongdoing by senior executives in the settlement, which people familiar with the matter said included an eight-figure payout to the prince.
The settlement means the company will avoid what threatened to be a protracted and high-profile court case that covered broad allegations of phone hacking and other illegal activity, as well as allegations of a cover-up involving current executives. and former senior executives.
The Duke of Sussex and former Labor deputy leader Lord Tom Watson were the only remaining claimants in the High Court case against NGN.
In a statement, NGN said it was sorry “for the distress caused to the Duke and the damage caused to relationships, friendships and family”, and apologized to the Prince in particular for his treatment of Diana, Princess of Wales, his mother felt. .
The company said the apology covered “incidents of illegal activity carried out by private investigators working for The Sun, not journalists, during the period 1996-2011”. She agreed to pay him “substantial damages,” the terms of which were not disclosed.
The company also offered a “full and unequivocal” apology to Watson for “unwarranted intrusion” into his private life by the News of the World between 2009 and 2011, when he served on parliament’s culture, media and sport select committee for investigating media abuses.
She admitted he had been scrutinized in 2009 by reporters at the Sunday tabloid and also agreed to pay him “substantial damages”. Terms were not disclosed.
Speaking outside court, Sherborne, who represented both claimants, described the settlement as a “monumental victory”. Murdoch’s company was “finally held accountable for its illegal actions and its flagrant disregard for the law,” he added.
The settlement will bring significant relief to some of the Murdoch executives who were expected to be named in the case.
They include Rebekah Brooks, former editor of The Sun and now chief executive of News UK, and Will Lewis, who previously worked for Murdoch’s UK newspaper business and is now publisher of The Washington Post.
Lewis’s position at Murdoch’s news group at the time has come under close scrutiny since he took over the US paper more than a year ago.
NGN has always said that the illegal voicemail tapping only happened at the News of the World, which was shut down after it was discovered that journalists at the paper had hacked the voicemail of murdered British teenager Milly Dowler.
As of Wednesday, she had not admitted any illegal activity at The Sun, although she has previously reached financial settlements with individuals related to the newspaper’s activities without any admission of liability.
Forcing a guilty plea from NGN has been a major motive for the Duke of Sussex, who was facing a significant financial risk in pursuing the case.
The case was set to be the culmination of the prince’s campaign against the British tabloid press, which he blames for the death of his mother, who was followed by paparazzi before her death in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
The prince previously secured £140,600 in damages from Mirror Group Newspapers and has outstanding claims against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail.
Emma Jones, board director at campaign group Hacked Off, said the deal marked a “humiliating day for The Sun and senior NGN executives, who have finally accepted that the allegations of wrongdoing made against the publisher are true”. .
“It is now clear that the public and parliament were lied to by the newspaper and its publisher as part of the most extraordinary corporate cover-up in living memory,” she added.
The settlement will mean the need for a further payment from Murdoch’s US broadcaster Fox, which covers all costs under the terms of the separation of News Corp and 21st Century Fox.
Fox, in a similar eleventh-hour deal in 2023, agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation case in which it was accused by voting machine maker Dominion of airing false allegations of election fraud in 2020 US presidential election.