The Daily Mail’s royal editor has denied using a private investigator to “search” for information about the Duke of Sussex and his ex-girlfriends, as she was shown emails suggesting the investigator “went out of his way” to help her.
Rebecca English’s name appears in six of the articles cited by Prince Harry in his case against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail.
He is one of seven plaintiffs who sued the publisher, alleging that its journalists profited from illegal information gathering for decades. ANL denies all allegations of wrongdoing and claims that all of its stories were obtained legitimately.
The allegations largely concern work done by Mike Behr, a South Africa-based private investigator who English said he knew only as “a freelance journalist who could help on stories from Africa.”
Appearing at London’s High Court, English was asked whether he had been sent the exact details of Chelsy Davy’s flight in December 2007, during Davy’s relationship with the duke.
David Sherborne, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, showed English an email Behr had sent him (also copying a Sun journalist) containing details of a flight relating to a holiday Davy was taking with Harry.
In the email, Behr also asked if the English and The Sun reporter “can put someone on his side.”
Sherborne said the information “could only have been obtained from the airline’s computer system”, which he said could only have come from a “blag”, or from having obtained the information illegally.
English said he did not remember the email and “did not ask” those flight details. “(Behr) was never asked for anything like that, ever,” he said. “That’s something I would never consider doing, once in a while.”
Asked about the suggestion to place someone next to Davy, English said: “This is an absolutely disgraceful suggestion from both him and you… there is clearly no response to this email, which emphasizes my belief that I never saw it.”
Sherborne said illegal information was then used in a story about a “defining holiday” for Harry and Davy.
However, English denied this and said that information for the story probably came from students at the University of Leeds, where Davy studied, “who were friends of Chelsy Davy and part of her circle”.
English was also shown an email from 2006, sent by Behr to the same Sun reporter. In the email, Behr asks if he should “deduct the cost of airline searches” from the money the journalist had already paid him. Behr adds: “I have invoiced Rebecca £200 for half the cost, so I am partially covered.”
English said the money he paid Behr was paid to him as a daily rate, rather than for specific information.
English was also shown an email exchange with Behr much later in 2014, in which he said that a £350 payment from her “for Harry’s work… simply does not cover the information provided. It is simply not worth it. I think you know exactly what I mean…”
Later, he emailed: “I don’t really want to explain why I’m asking for more in an email. So let’s better chat when you have time.”
In a third email, he said an additional payment was justified “not for the time invested but for taking the risk.”
English said Behr liked talking to her on the phone because he was “very difficult to deal with” and often successfully pressured her to pay him more when they spoke on the phone.
However, Sherborne said Behr was suggesting that his £350 payment “does not even cover the bribes he had to pay” for trying to obtain illegally obtained information relating to Harry and his then-girlfriend, Cressida Bonas.
English said Sherborne was wrong and repeatedly said it was “absolutely false” that she ever used Behr to obtain criticized information from hotels or airlines.
English said the email exchange was related to their joint efforts to monitor a charity trip Harry was taking in Antarctica.
The case continues.
