Investigator 'did unlawful stuff' regarding Harry, court hears

An American private investigator has told the High Court he "did unlawful stuff" in relation to the Duke of Sussex for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday - but could not "recall what exactly".

Dan Portley-Hanks supplied a written statement that was given as evidence in support of the legal action being taken by Prince Harry and several other famous figures against the newspapers' publisher Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

Portley-Hanks said he had worked for ANL titles from the early 1990s until the early 2010s, and is now aged 79.

Prince Harry is one of seven high-profile claimants accusing ANL of "grave breaches of privacy" over a 20-year period. The publisher has denied wrongdoing.

Other claimants in the case include Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. Both Sir Elton and Baroness Lawrence allege that they were the subjects of unlawful information gathering.

Portley-Hanks, who started his statement by explaining he is commonly known as Detective Danno, said he had become a private investigator when he saw an advert offering full training in the profession, just a week after he had been released from prison in 1979.

After setting up his own company, he was hired an as in-house private investigator for two US news shows. In the mid-1990s, because he was getting lots of calls from British newspapers, he set up a new enterprise as an "independent supplier of data to British tabloid reporters".

He said he quickly got "a lot of work" from two Mail On Sunday journalists, Caroline Graham and Sharon Churcher.

That paper and its sister title became his "best client and the biggest payer", he said, and Graham and Churcher "frequently" asked him to find phone numbers of people they wished to trace.

"I was the database guy. All I needed was a name or a phone number, and I could find a target's contact and other private details, usually within minutes," Portley-Hanks added.

In his statement, he explained the work that he had done, on request by the paper, to acquire "detailed information" including phone records and contact between celebrity couples.

They included Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton and singer Nicole Scherzinger, singer Jennifer Lopez and her then-partner Chris Judd, and singer Kylie Minogue and her then-boyfriend Olivier Martinez.

Portley-Hanks' statement then named the corresponding Mail on Sunday headlines and articles that appeared in the newspaper within weeks of him providing his information.

On Prince Harry, he said: "I recall that I did stuff for the Mail On Sunday and Daily Mail in relation to Prince Harry. I know that I did unlawful stuff on him but I cannot recall what exactly."

Churcher, he said, once asked him to send money to a former police officer, which was then used to pay a serving police officer for access to confidential files in relation to Jeffrey Epstein.

Portley-Hanks said he had been asked to trace one of the paedophile financier's victims who, he discovered, was called "Virginia".

At the end of his statement, Portley-Hanks said he was "coming forward to do the right thing before I die".

"The digging into the privacy of those people caused a lot of anguish in me."

In response, Antony White KC, acting for ANL, said in written submissions that the publisher "strongly" denied that Prince Harry had been the subject of unlawful information gathering.

White said there was an "inability on the part of the claimants to evidence these so-called confessions" by Portley-Hanks.

"What has emerged, and continues to emerge, through the drip feed of the claimants' disclosure and Associated's own investigations is a clear picture of purported evidence being obtained through financial inducements and threats," he said.

"No specific incidents" of commissioning private investigators were alleged in relation to Graham, he added.

As for the claim that "corrupt payments" had been made to a police officer, White said the documents had been sourced by Churcher from "exhibits placed on the public record" in civil proceedings involving Epstein.

The incident "provides no evidence of propensity to commission or use the product of unlawful information gathering", the barrister said.

The trial is expected to end in March, with a judgment in writing at a later date.