Piers Morgan authorised the illegal blagging of a prince’s private bank details when he was editor of the Daily Mirror, it has been alleged at the high court.
Prince Michael of Kent’s personal financial records were published by the Mirror in 1999, allegedly revealing that Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin was millions of pounds in debt and had an unauthorised £220,000 overdraft at Coutts bank.
When the prince’s lawyers complained to Morgan that the story was inaccurate and the records must have been obtained illegally, Morgan dismissed their “poor and thinly disguised threat” and insisted the information had come from an “impeccable source”.
In reality, the Mirror obtained the information after employing private investigators to pose as the prince’s accountant, phone the bank and illegally “blag” his account details, the court heard.
Before the article was published, two hoax calls were made to Coutts seeking to confirm the prince’s bank account number. The Mirror’s publisher later settled a legal claim from Prince Michael and issued an apology to him.
David Sherborne, representing claimants in the phone-hacking trial against Mirror Group Newspapers, said the incident pointed to a culture of widespread illegality and cover-ups at the highest level of the company. The barrister said it was “inconceivable the legal department and Mr Morgan were not aware of the source of this story”.
The high court also heard claims that:
Morgan “lies at the heart” of allegations of unlawful information-gathering, including phone hacking, under the Mirror’s parent company and was “directly” involved in illegal behaviour.
The journalist who helped obtain Prince Michael of Kent’s financial records was Gary Jones, now the editor of the Daily Express.
The Mirror regularly used the services of Southern Investigations, a private investigations agency heavily implicated in police corruption and the murder of its former employee Daniel Morgan.
Phone hacking was so widespread at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People that even those newspapers’ editors were illegally accessing voicemails.
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The claims were made on the second day of the Mirror group’s phone-hacking trial, in which more than 100 alleged phone hacking victims are bringing cases against the publisher. Four individuals have had their claims chosen as test cases, including Prince Harry, and will give evidence in court next month.
Sherborne, the claimants’ barrister, told the court there was widespread illegal behaviour at every level of the organisation. “Mr Morgan lies right at the heart of this in a number of ways. He was a very hands-on editor, also very closely connected to the board … We have the direct involvement of Mr Morgan in a number of these incidents and his knowledge of voicemail interception,” he said.
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Morgan has always denied knowingly commissioning phone hacking. In an interview with the BBC released on Wednesday night, he said: “Originally I said I had never hacked a phone, never told anyone to hack a phone, and no stories have been published in the Mirror in my time from the hacking of a phone. Then someone pointed out that you can only know the first two things for sure. All I can talk to is what I know: I never hacked a phone; I wouldn’t know how.”
The court heard of several occasions when Mirror journalists employed the services of Southern Investigations, a private investigations agency run by Jonathan Rees, who was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in 1999. Rees used to work closely with Daniel Morgan, whose 1987 murder led to one of the Metropolitan police’s longest-running scandals.
Sherborne claimed the reporter Gary Jones, now the editor of the Daily Express, commissioned “multiple unlawful investigations”, including commissioning Rees to target Prince Michael of Kent. “Piers Morgan was personally aware of what Gary Jones was doing,” the lawyer said.
Sherborne alleged that during the mid-2000s phone hacking was so widespread at newspapers owned by the Mirror group that even the editors were getting in on the act. He said Richard Wallace at the Daily Mirror, Tina Weaver at the Sunday Mirror and Mark Thomas at the People were not only aware of what was going on but at times personally accessing voicemails.
The barrister alleged: “All three of them were prolific hackers and users of unlawful information gathering.”
All three editors have since left their newspaper roles. Wallace was recently hired to run Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV channel. This means he is the boss of the channel’s star presenter, Piers Morgan.
