A convicted phone hacker used money from Formula One boss Max Mosley to pay a string of private investigators at the centre of the Prince Harry privacy case, the High Court heard on Wednesday.
Graham Johnson said more than £125,000 was paid to other hackers, alleged ‘blaggers’ and private detectives during his research into claims against the Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday.
He denied, however, the payments were part of a plan to bring legal claims against the newspapers, or that they amounted to paying witnesses for their evidence.
But he said Mr Mosley, a prominent privacy campaigner, had later effectively told him to ‘beef up the propaganda’ against the newspaper group and to restart a campaign against it.
A document shown to the court revealed a company linked to Mr Mosley loaned £565,000 to Mr Johnson’s publishing company, Yellow Press.
Seven public figures including the Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, allege they were the targets of unlawful information gathering commissioned by the Daily Mail and The Mail On Sunday.
Associated Newspapers, publishers of both newspapers, denies its journalists commissioned phone hacking, landline tapping and blagging of private information and described the claims as ‘simply untrue’ and ‘preposterous’.
