Elton John, Prince Harry and others are suing the publisher of the Daily Mail over alleged ‘privacy breaches’

Elton John and Prince Harry are among those who have launched legal proceedings against the Daily Mail’s publishers, Associated Newspapers, for what they describe as “serious breaches of privacy”. Associated Newspapers has denied the allegations.

The group also includes John’s husband, filmmaker David Furnish, as well as actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, and Baroness Doreen Lawrence. Harry and Frost are represented by Hamlins Law Firm, while John, Furnish, Hurley and Lawrence are represented by Gunnercooke.

In a statement shared by the BBC, the Hamlins allege that their clients were victims of “suspicious criminal activities and serious breaches of privacy.” Specifically, they accuse the publisher of “hiring private investigators to secretly place listening devices in people’s cars and homes,” as well as “assigning individuals to listen in on and record live private phone calls relaxed.”

Other charges included paying police officers for “insider and sensitive information”, “fooling people” to obtain medical information from hospitals and other clinics, and gaining access to bank accounts, credit histories and financial transactions “through unlawful means and by manipulation”.

Hamlins, in his statement, said that the people they represented had “come together to reveal the truth and hold journalists accountable, many of whom continue to hold high positions of authority and power.”

Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail along with The Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online, has “completely and unequivocally” denied the allegations in a statement, calling them “absurd defamation” and a “premeditated and orchestrated attempt to draw Mail headlines to. the phone hacking scandal involving articles up to 30 years old.

The statement continued: “These baseless and highly defamatory claims – based on unreliable evidence – appear to be nothing more than a fishing trip by the plaintiffs and their attorneys, some of whom have taken on cases elsewhere another already.”