Researcher paid people for testimony about Daily Mail, high court told
A researcher investigating lawbreaking by the media paid private investigators and ex-journalists for their testimony about alleged unlawful activity at the publisher of the Daily Mail, the high court has heard.Graham Johnson, a former phone hacker who later turned to researching unlawful activity in the press, confirmed he had made payments to six people who all feature in the case Prince Harry and others have brought against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL).However, he said he had never paid for witness testimony. Appearing in court, he said he had paid the group as his contacts, authors and contributors as he attempted to draw attention to unlawful behaviour by the media.Johnson said most of the funding for those payments came from either Max Mosley, the late multimillionaire and privacy campaigner, or a company linked to Mosley’s estate. Some came from a loan from Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP and prominent member of the Hacked Off campaign group.The payments included £75,000 to Gavin Burrows, a private detective who has made some of the most serious claims of phone hacking, landline tapping and bugging. Burrows now claims the signature on his witness statement about the unlawful activities he carried out for ANL is a forgery.ANL denies all the claims of unlawful information gathering made by a group of claimants that includes Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, and the actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost.The publisher has described the accusations as “preposterous” and said all articles were sourced “by entirely legitimate reporting”.Appearing at the high court, Johnson, who is now a researcher assisting the claimants’ case, confirmed he had paid more than £100,000 to figures whose claims are central to the allegations facing ANL.Johnson paid Burrows £25,000 for “extensive notes and commentary” and £5,000 a month for 10 months, as part of a deal to work on a memoir.Glenn Mulcaire and Greg Miskiw, both convicted phone hackers, were paid £22,000 and £12,000 respectively between 2015 and 2016. Johnson was also shown an email by ANL’s legal team, in which he said he was trying to persuade Mulcaire to “raise his game”.Steve Whittamore, convicted of breaching information laws in 2005, was paid £5,000 of a £15,000 contract in 2021.Daniel Portley-Hanks, a US-based private investigator, was paid £6,000 for work on a book, as well as “a few hundred dollars” for his archive. Christine Hart, another private investigator turned journalist, was paid £5,000 by Johnson.The claimants’ legal team accuse ANL of using Burrows to carry out a series of unlawful activities. They accuse Hart of “blagging” information for the publisher, Portley-Hanks and Whittamore of obtaining private personal details, and Mulcaire and Miskiw of dealing in information from phone hacking.Antony White, the lead barrister for ANL, put it to Johnson that there was a “pattern of payments, or promises of payments, to people to provide evidence that can be used against Associated or newspapers more generally.“I suggest it was part of your modus operandi in investigating evidence of unlawful information gathering against Associated to make payments to people who could provide potentially helpful evidence,” he said.Johnson repeatedly denied the allegation, stating the money had been paid to his sources for “journalistic reasons”.“I never paid for witness evidence which was used in legal proceedings,” he said. “I had taken legal advice multiple times, including written advice, and I stuck with that advice and complied with it.”He said he had written many articles about the group and also placed interviews with some on the BBC’s Panorama and other outlets. “I took this story, a dead story, and got it part of popular culture again, which it is,” Johnson said.In written submissions, White said the accusations against ANL were a product of an attempt by the claimants’ researchers and legal team to present a case “based entirely on spurious and/or discredited information, none of which is before the court in the form of proper admissible evidence”.The case continues.
