Hugh Grant has urged U.K. police to open a new criminal investigation into Rupert Murdoch‘s News Group Newspapers (NGN) in the wake of Prince Harry’s landmark settlement, saying the job is “not done by any means.”
On Wednesday, the Duke of Sussex settled in last-minute negotiations as his trial against the publisher of The Sun tabloid kicked off. He had brought the case to NGN, claiming his privacy had been violated by alleged phone hacking and unlawful information gathering had been carried out by journalists and private investigators working for The Sun and the defunct News of the World between 1996 and 2011. NGN offered the Duke a “full and unequivocal apology.”
British star Grant — recently nominated for a lead actor BAFTA for his performance in Heretic — also settled a privacy claim against NGN last year, later explaining he may have faced a bill of up to £10 million ($12.4M) — even if he won. He had accused The Sun of using private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house.
Now, Grant is renewing calls from others for further action to be taken, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Friday that his and Harry’s settlements showed a civil case was “not the right instrument” to get to the “real truth of what happened” at the newspaper. He added that NGN had “gamed” the civil courts to silence victims and a criminal case is now necessary.
“That’s what they’ve done consistently over the last 10 years,” the actor said. “They’ve spent £1 billion to make sure these things are never looked at in court … and you don’t get proper judicial findings. I think what they’re terrified of is that those findings would trigger a new criminal inquiry.”
Grant also said that a criminal investigation is required, as people working at The Sun at the time of the alleged crimes were “still in great positions of power.”
He added: “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.’”
He called on Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Metropolitan Police to delve further.
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