Piers Morgan is accused of knowing a tabloid story about Prince Michael of Kent’s finances had been “blagged” illegally by private investigators working for the Daily Mirror, the High Court has heard.
The former newspaper editor turned TV host is under fire in a legal battle brought by Prince Harry and others against the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), alleging phone hacking and unlawful newsgathering.
On the second day of the trial, barrister David Sherborne detailed a 1999 Daily Mirror story which claimed Prince Michael of Kent had run up £2.5 million in debts including an unauthorised £220,000 overdraft at private bank Coutts.
It is said the Mirror obtained details of the senior Royal’s bank account through the services of Southern Investigations, a private eye agency which allegedly fooled the bank into giving out information by posing as the Prince’s accountant.
“The Royal Family was obviously a very important target to different newspapers, and the Daily Mirror was no exception”, said Mr Sherborne.
“At the time of the Prince Michael of Kent story, it (the newspaper) was edited by Piers Morgan and (he) lies right at the heart of this in a number of ways.”
The court heard a complaint was lodged with the Mirror after the story first ran, with lawyers for the Prince denying that any debts had been run-up and asserting: “What is clear is that your newspaper has obtained information in a manner which is not only in breach of confidence but which may well also be in breach of the criminal law.”
In response, Morgan stood by the story and insisted it had come from an “impeccable source”.
“Further your suggestion that this newspaper, or any of its employees, may have been involved in a breach of the criminal law in investigating the subject matter of these articles is a poor and thinly disguised threat that I will not dignify with comment”, he wrote.
“The allegation…comes from an impeccable source who has an intimate knowledge of your client’s financial state.”
Mr Sherborne suggested Morgan had “avoided answering the question” in his response.
The trial is due to analyse phone records from Southern Investigations as well as invoices submitted to MGN which are alleged to reveal unlawful activity.
Coutts bank also provided a statement at the time, denying the debt claims and suggesting a member of staff had received a “hoax call” which they suspected as being the source of the leaked information.
“Mr Morgan, and the MGN lawyers he consulted before writing this letter, knew full well that the information had been obtained unlawfully and that the criminal law had in fact been breached, and the ‘impeccable source’ they referred to was in fact (private investigator) Mr Rees”, said Mr Sherborne, in written submissions.
He added that Morgan’s letter to the Prince’s lawyers had also “showed an awareness of how the Kents’ accounts had allegedly been restructured and rescheduled - information that could only have come from the information which had been blagged”.
The court heard Morgan’s alleged knowledge of unlawful blagging is denied by MGN.
The TV host spoke out on Wednesday after he was accused on the first day of the trial of knowing about phone hacking and unlawful activity on the newspaper when he was editor.
In a pre-recorded interview ahead of the trial with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Morgan said: “I think phone hacking is completely wrong and shouldn’t have been happening and it was lazy journalists being lazy.
He added: “There’s no evidence I knew anything about any of this… I never told anybody to hack a phone.”
MGN has admitted some wrongdoing by journalists and investigators in a claim brought by Prince Harry, soaps stars Nikki Sanderson and Michael Le Vell, and comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman.
But the media group denies allegations of phone hacking for many of the stories that will form the centre of the case.
The trial continues.
