Prince Harry’s humiliation after loss against the tabloids in court showdown | 60 Minutes Australia

in 60 minutes.Needs to be exposed.He is the biggest scam in legal history.Hold the front page.

How are you feeling confident?Prince Harry is being a toddler, throwing his toys at the pram.

How taking on a tambourine at a tittle -tattle ended up becoming Prince Harry's Daily Mail.

He's incredibly gullible.He really believed that there was a case.

That's next on 60 Minutes.

Hello, I'm Tara Brown.When Prince Harry picks a fight, he aims for big targets.Just ask his own family.But perhaps even more daring, the Duke's also gone after the vengeful, intrusive and very powerful British press.And with legal victories already against two of the biggest newspaper groups, Harry was probably confident taking on the publishers of the Daily Mail.In this case, though, the royal was wrong.

In trying to convince the court the tabloid had illegally hacked and tapped his and other celebrities' phones, he came unstuck when his own team was accused of fabricating evidence.Things were really doomed for Harry, though, when his star witness decided to testify for the other side.Meet Gavin Burrows, an old -school private eye investigator who for the past 30 years has made his living accessing the personal information most of us want kept secret.Well, Gavin, you come from a profession that is certainly dark and murky, don't you?

Some people might describe it like that.Some people might describe it as informative.I'm not going to say I was an angel when I first started out, but it was a bit like the Wild West in the 90s.

Thirty years ago, there was a voracious appetite for what those cowboy practices could deliver.Private and often painful details, turning up as salacious headlines to sell the tabloids.But today, Prince Harry has taken it upon himself to fight back.Curiously, with the shifty Gavin Burrows in his corner.The Prince was relying on Gavin's inside knowledge of the gumshoe game.to make his allegations that when the papers were hunting for juicy stories, they did so illegally.

I was purely there to give my expert opinion.

Expert opinion on what, exactly?

How it all works.Because a lot of my friends were working for the press, and I would hear all the funny stories, and they'd say, oh, you won't believe who so -and -so's seeing, or you won't believe this, we just tapped this phone.

Gavin might like to downplay it now, but he has been at the heart of a four -year court case between the Prince and the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.How are you feeling confident?On one side, Prince Harry and six other high -profile celebrities, including Elton John, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, who accused the Mail of illegally gathering personal information about them through phone hacking and tapping.On the other side, the male publishers fiercely defended their journalism.

Today, in what was a momentous victory for the male, the High Court dismissed every single one of the 97 claims.

In a resounding shock victory last month, the Court found there was no evidence the papers had gathered their information unlawfully.So do you see this as a victory for press freedom?

It is a victory for press freedom, and it's something that all of us in the press should be happy for.

Nicole Lampert, the former showbiz editor at the Daily Mail, is one of the journalists said to have broken the law to get her inside information, an allegation she strongly denies.

And I think, you know, newspapers today You know, at all sorts of press, we are breaking stories and we are holding the powerful to account, and they do not like that, and they have tried to use these cases to make it more difficult for us to tell our stories.So, of course, it's an important victory for press freedom.

Prince Harry sees it, rather, as a path to even greater intrusion.The case centred on 55 highly personal articles, published between 1997 and 2015.The stories were about him and the other claimants in the trial.Such was their accuracy, the group says the information had to have come from hacking or tapping.

What were you being accused of?So I had seven stories that I was accused of.Four of them were about Sadie Frost, two of them were about Liz Hurley and one was about Elton John.Have you hacked anyone?I've never hacked anyone, no.

Did you ever worry or suspect that the information that you were using in your pieces had been gained unlawfully?No, I didn't.No.Instead, Nicole says she used core journalism skills to get her stories, hard work and well -cultivated contacts.For her piece, exposing the confidential details of the divorce proceedings,between actors Sadie Frost and Jude Law, she said she relied on a source close to Sadie.

The information in a lot of your articles was very personal, private, painful even.Can you understand why the claimants believed that you'd gathered that information unlawfully?That it was so sort of personal to them that they felt that you must have overheard them talking about it.

I can understand why she might suspect that somebody was giving the information to the newspapers, which is exactly what was happening.And you're a journalist, you'll know.You have people that are close to a situation for different motivations, sometimes because they're being paid or sometimes because they bear a grudge.They will give information to newspapers.And Sadie, you know, it's not nice for her.that she had someone within her inner circle, and I can understand why that might be upsetting, but that doesn't mean that it was illegal.

The Mail has claimed that this is a great triumph for freedom of speech.It's nothing of the sort, because the stories that the Mail was getting were trivial, utter gossip and... really of no public interest at all.It was fighting a battle for tittle -tattle and nothing more.

But celebrated media law expert and human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson recognises while the detail might be trivial, that doesn't automatically mean it was gathered illegally.So a critical point in this case to remember is that The findings didn't say that these stories weren't an invasion of privacy.or that they weren't deeply personal or painful, but that they weren't collected unlawfully.

Well, it couldn't be proved that they were collected unlawfully.That was the bottom line.Maybe they were, who knows?But Prince Harry and his friends did not have the evidence.

Prince Harry's beef with the Daily Mail stems back more than 20 years, from when he and girlfriend at the time, Chelsea Davy, were at the centre of the paper's unwanted attention.The Prince accused the paper of hiring a PI to get their flight details and seat numbers in order to get a reporter onto their plane to shadow the pair and write a story about them.The allegation is, to get the information, the PI used illegal blagging, which is securing information by lying, often pretending to be someone they're not.Did you ever participate in blagging?

I didn't really have to.I know people that did.And of course, that's a pretty broad, it's quite a broad thing, because...

Did you get information by being deceptive?

Of course, if you're a detective, of course.

Gavin Burrows is the private eye Prince Harry believed blagged the airline to get the story of he and Chelsea for the Daily Mail.All these years later, it was Gavin's insider knowledge of working for the paper and his willingness to turn whistleblower that the Prince relied on to sue the newspaper group.Gavin's candor regarding criminal behaviour was remarkable, as he told the BBC five years ago.

2004, Prince Harry started dating a young woman called Chelsea Davy.Yes, right.Did that open up a lucrative new avenue for you?

Very much so.There was a lot of voicemail hacking going on.There was a lot of surveillance going on on Chelsea Davy, on her phones, on her comms.

That's what Gavin had to say then.Confoundingly, today, he has a different take.Did you blag to find out the specific flight details of Chelsea Davy?

No.

The Daily Mail.

And so her life became an object of obsession for you guys as well?

Yeah.Medical records, handshake and abortion, sexual diseases, ex -boyfriends, phantom check -up, education.

You talked about the need to, you know, find any dirt on her, find out if she'd had an abortion, any dirt on ex -boyfriends.

Because that's the normal brief.

So you were just making it up, like you could have put anyone's name...

No, I was basically describing that's what they would do.But that's not what you did?No, I wasn't working for the press then.

OK.

No, I was just giving my expert opinion.

So why did you talk about it on BBC as though you did?

Oh, it was edited tonight.I'm really angry about it.They've taken it down.There's a lawsuit coming over that as well.

You're suing them?Well, funnily, yeah, I am.But this is not the first time the slippery Gavin Burrows has seemingly gone back on what he said.

If Chelsea Davey were here right now, what would you care to say to her?Oh, I'm very sorry.

I am very sorry, very sorry, because my actions were ruthless, but they were...And I'm not making the excuse, but they were ruthless because I was greedy and because I was into my cocaine and...I was living in a fake state of grandeur.

Since that interview, Prince Harry's so -called star witness in the trial has turned rogue, changing sides to defend the papers and tanking the celebrity legal case.But as you'll see, it gets a whole lot worse.Coming up, allegations of lies and forgeries against Harry's team.This time, it's not the papers playing dirty.

But it needs to be exposed.I mean, he's the biggest scam in legal history.

It's been a long -held tradition in the UK for the tabloids to treat celebrities and the royal family as fair game.But after a lifetime of being a target, Prince Harry has fought back.

What's your message to the British press?

Securing wins against two of the biggest newspaper groups in Britain.

News UK have admitted that The Sun has indeed engaged in illegal practices.

Spurred on by his earlier success, Harry and a group of high -profile friends sued the Daily Mail group, accusing its journalists of unlawfully gathering their most personal details.But in a shock blow last month, they lost their four -year court case.

The High Court dismissed every single one of the 97 claims.

I think he was thought he was following in his beloved mother's footsteps by taking action to protect his privacy and in fact more so perhaps the privacy of his wife.It was quite in fact a noble thing for him to take on.

But media lawyer Geoffrey Robertsonsays the case turned into a circus when the key witness for the Harry team seemingly swapped sides.

The evidence they thought they had came from a man who retracted it and was of no credibility at all.

That man was Gavin Burrows, and his so -called evidence came in the form of a 21 -page statement made to Harry's legal research team.In it, Burrows, a private investigator, claimed the Daily Mail was his biggest client.He said he followed the paper's instructions to commit crimes, mobile phone hacking, landline tapping and house bugging.For Harry and Co, he was the dream smoking gun, except he now denies he ever made the statement or knew anything about it.

I mean, I haven't...What I'm sick of is they're saying in the press I switched sides.Well, I wasn't on any side.

But you were.I just...You were working with the research team for a year before the trial.What were you doing for them?

I was purely there to give my expert opinion.

How much did you get paid?

Yeah, I did receive £75 ,000, but I'm a businessman, you know.

But then the Wiley businessman and the research team fell out and had no contact.15 months later, Gavin learned he was being touted as the team's whistleblower, expected to give explosive evidence in court against the Daily Mail publishers.So when did you discover that you were being used as the star witness in this case?

When I read it in the newspaper, really.And some, you know, sorry, no offence, but you know what journalists are like, suddenly, they're making me the judge.witness.I don't know who made that up.It's just, it's ridiculous.And what they've done is they've tried to turn my expert opinion into a witness statement.

I never made a statement.

As outlandish as it might sound, he accuses the team behind Harry of fabricating the statement and forging his signature, something Harry's legal team denies.Gavin alleges that what he says were made -up assertions were used to convince the unwitting Harry and the other celebrities to sign up to the lawsuit.He claims to have been so outraged he joined forces with the papers against the Prince.

I think they were a bit surprised to hear from me.And I said, no, it really is me.And I thought that would be the end of it.But they're so greedy.And I suppose you could say that the legal team were too scared to go back.They couldn't really go back to the claimants and say they lied, could they?

All claimants have been duped.But it needs to be exposed.I mean, it is the biggest scam in legal history.

Former Daily Mail journalist Nicole Lampert has a similar view.She was sued by the group for using information illegally sourced to write her articles.

In some ways, I don't blame them for believing this evidence and for wanting to believe it.And really, the question is over the people who created this false trail and this evidence, or this lack of evidence.

And the court found in her favour that she didn't break the law.A win, she says, for journalism, a loss for those who try to avoid scrutiny.You don't think this fight was about principle?

No.These are not principle people, any of them.And I'm not talking about the celebrities, I'm talking about the people behind this.

I am talking about the celebrities, and it would seem that foremost, that their fight was about what they believed, was about principle.No, I don't think so.

I think they believed that they had perhaps been hacked or something like that, and that there was a way of getting money out of it.I think Prince Harry certainly thinks, you know, he thinks that he has principles, but he has quite a distorted sense of reality, I would say.

Supporting the claimants, Emma Jones from lobby group Hacked Off denies the papers deserve a victory march, despite their overwhelming win in the court.None of the claims stood up.None of them were accepted.That is a catastrophic loss, isn't it?

Well, it's been obviously billed as a catastrophic loss by the mail, but were they exonerated is a different question.I mean, you've got to ask the question, Why were they writing stories about people's ectopic pregnancies?Why were they speculating about the paternity of people's children?Why were they paying over three million pounds to private investigators for stories over a period of time?Newspapers should be in the business of finding out information about powerful people and holding them to account, not delving in the rubbish bins of people to try and find out who they've been having sex with.

While there's no doubt the tussle over what is private and what should be made public goes on, that's not what was being scrutinised in this case.At the centre of this trial was how the male gathered sensitive and personal details on celebrity women.No matter how suspicious they seemed, their practices were deemed to be legal.A judgment Prince Harry finds hard to accept.Prince Harry's view of the judgment was that it was a whitewash.

You roll your eyes.It certainly wasn't a whitewash.It was 10 weeks of evidence and of lies being thrown at us journalists and then being unable to prove a single count against us.And perhaps, you know, it feels to me that Prince Harry is both being a toddler, throwing his toys at the pram, but also perhaps he's incredibly gullible.He really believed that there was a case and there wasn't one.

We asked the head of Prince Harry's legal research team for comment, but received no response.