'This is used very much by as 'a shield, not a sword' against NGN's attack. 'It is important to bear in mind that in responding to this bid by NGN to prevent his claims going to trial, has had to make public the details of this secret agreement, as well as the fact that his brother, His Royal Highness Prince William, has recently settled his claim against NGN behind the scenes,' lawyer David Sherborne wrote. The court papers said William, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, later settled for a large, undisclosed sum.

He began pushing for a resolution in 2017 but said he 'had enough' after the publisher 'filibustered.' He filed suit in 2019. Harry said he would have brought a lawsuit earlier if not for the agreement.

'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,' Harry said in his witness statement. King Charles and Camilla, the Queen Consort, arrive at a reception in Ballater, Scotland, on Oct. Harry alluded to an incident that became known as 'tampongate,' where recordings were leaked of intimate conversations in which his father, now King Charles, speaking with his paramour, now Queen Consort Camilla, compared himself to a tampon. Harry said the rationale for the secret agreement reached with senior executives at News Group Newspapers was to avoid putting members of the Royal Family on the witness stand to recount embarrassing voice mails intercepted by reporters. The publisher denied there was any secret agreement. The deal, which the prince said was authorized by the late Queen Elizabeth, would have prevented future litigation from the royals. News Group Newspapers (NGN), which Murdoch owns, argued that a High Court judge should throw out phone-hacking lawsuits by Prince Harry and by actor Hugh Grant because the claims were brought too late.īut Harry, the Duke of Sussex, said he was prevented from bringing his case because of a 'secret agreement' between the Royal Family and the newspapers that called for a settlement and apology. The suit alleges the newspapers unlawfully gathered information in a scandal dating back two decades. Prince Harry's lawyer revealed the unspecified payout in a summary of arguments about why Harry's lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun and now-defunct News of the World shouldn't be thrown out. Prince William quietly received 'a very large sum of money' in a 2020 settlement with the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire for phone hacking, according to court documents aired Tuesday in one of his brother's lawsuits.

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