Hugh Grant wants NGN executives to face a ‘new criminal inquiry’

Following NGN’s “massive” settlement with Prince Harry and Tom Watson, a lot of people within the Murdochs’ organizations breathed a sigh of relief. This was as close as they’d ever come to being held accountable for all of their criminal activity for years and years. There were many mentions of Will Lewis, the current CEO of the Washington Post and former executive at the Times of London/NGN. Lewis was one of the main guys at NGN saying “hey, we should really delete all of our emails and wipe our hard drives, just in case!” All of those people are relieved because they know Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants no part of holding the Murdochs accountable, because the political blowback on Starmer would be extraordinary.

So what now? Despite Starmer shrugging off demands for “Leveson 2,” the Met police have apparently requested transcripts of the pre-trial hearings in Prince Harry’s case against NGN. Harry’s sole co-plantiff Tom Watson also said that he sent a cache of documents and compiled evidence to the police. I don’t have high hopes that anything will happen. It’s more than likely that the Met will announce, in six months’ time, that they “looked into the claims” and found nothing worth prosecuting. But still, there are significant media-watchdog groups looking to piggyback on NGN’s admissions of wrong-doing in their settlement with Harry. Hugh Grant has some ideas about where to go next:

Hugh Grant is calling for a criminal investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers following Prince Harry’s settlement against the publisher. Prince Harry originally sued NGN over accusations that investigators and journalists under the publisher engaged in illegal information gathering between 1996 and 2011, and that The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World had targeted him during that time.

The Duke of Sussex’s trial against NGN-owned The Sun was set to begin when, on Jan. 22, the two parties reached a settlement which included an eight-figure sum in damages to be paid to Prince Harry and a “full an unequivocal apology” from NGN. The settlement did not include apologies from named senior executives who were at the company during that period of time.

Now Grant — who also sued NGN and settled a privacy claim against them last year — is calling for more drastic action against the publisher, according to The Hollywood Reporter, citing that the job is “not done by any means.”

A civil suit was “not the right instrument” to obtain the “real truth of what happened,” Grant said.

“That’s what they’ve done consistently over the last 10 years. They’ve spent £1 billion to make sure these things are never looked at in court … and you don’t get proper judicial findings,” the actor told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “I think what they’re terrified of is that those findings would trigger a new criminal inquiry.”

He continued, “A lot of the foot soldiers for those newspapers have now come over to our side […] to say this is awful. We’ve been punished, we’ve been to prison, we’ve paid fines, we’ve lost our jobs. But the people who commanded all this, they’re still there.”

In addition to his calls for a criminal inquiry into NGN, the actor also suggested Britain’s Crown Protection Service should take action.

[From People]

It’s been clear for some time that Hugh and Prince Harry have been in communication, and perhaps still are in regular communication. I think Hugh had high hopes that Harry would really be able to take it to NGN, but Hugh understands the limits of civil litigation more than most. Hugh is right, of course, that this whole thing is a criminal matter, and a police matter. But yeah… I just don’t think much will come of it from here. NGN blinked, no doubt, but they had to spend a lot to get this result.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.