All of Prince William’s phone hacking settlement money (£1 Million) went to charity

All of Prince William’s phone hacking settlement money (£1 Million) went to charity.

He received the money ‘behind the scenes’ in 2020 from News Group Newspapers (NGN), publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, it is claimed.

It came to light as part of Prince Harry’s battle against NGN with actor Hugh Grant, who are suing the group over alleged unlawful information gathering at the titles.

Today, the newspaper group today urged Mr Justice Fancourt to throw out both claims at the High Court, arguing that they had been brought too late.

However, David Sherborne, representing Harry, said the ‘secret agreement’ meant ‘the claimant could not bring a claim against NGN for phone hacking at that time’.

He said the Queen was personally involved in the ‘discussions and authorisation’ of this deal.

Prince Harry, who was watching by video link, submitted a 31-page witness statement in which he revealed his brother’s payout ‘to prove the existence of this secret agreement’.

The deal supposedly saw the Royal Family agree to not pursue NGN until after the conclusion of the newspaper group’s litigation battle with other claimants over hacking, at which point the royals’ claims would be quietly ‘admitted or settled with an apology’.

But Anthony Hudson KC, for NGN, said the publisher’s position was that ‘there was no such secret agreement’.

He said while communications show ‘discussions took place between the Palace and NGN’ they ‘do not provide any support for a suggestion that there was an agreement by which NGN would forgo its right to bring a limitation defence in response to any claims by members of the Royal Family’.

The publisher denied there was any secret agreement.

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 voicemails intercepted by reporters.

Harry alluded to an incident that became known as “tampongate,” in which recordings were leaked of intimate conversations in which his father, now King Charles III, speaking with his paramour, now Queen Consort Camilla, compared himself to a tampon.

“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.

News Group Newspapers, which Murdoch owns, argued that a High Court judge should throw out phone hacking lawsuits by the prince and by actor Hugh Grant because the claims were brought too late.

But 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 deal, which the prince said was authorized by the late Queen Elizabeth II, would have prevented future litigation from the royals.