A private investigator in the legal claim between a group of household names, including the Duke of Sussex, and the publisher of the Daily Mail claims his signature on a previous witness statement is a “forgery”, the High Court has heard.
Gavin Burrows has been described as central to the most serious allegations of unlawful information gathering made by the group, which includes Sir Elton John, Liz Hurley, actress Sadie Frost, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence and politician Sir Simon Hughes, the court in London was told.
Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) is accused by the group of carrying out or commissioning unlawful activities such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records and accessing private phone conversations.
ANL denies the allegations and is defending the legal action.
In a previous statement, dated August 2021, Mr Burrows is said to have claimed to have targeted “hundreds, possibly thousands of people” through voicemail hacking, landline tapping, and accessing financial and medical information for a journalist at the Mail On Sunday.
But on Tuesday, the court heard that in September this year, he made a statement to ANL’s lawyers in which he claimed not to have signed the August 2021 document.
In the recent statement, he said: “I do not recognise the earlier witness statement of August 16, 2021 and I believe that my signature on that document is a forgery. A lot of it is not written in my type of language.
“Further, the contents of the statement are substantially untrue.”
He added that he had “never” carried out work for the Mail On Sunday or the Daily Mail, apart from one job relating to Sir Richard Branson that “did not involve any illegal activity”.
The latest statement comes after Mr Burrows said he wished “to make clear that I was never instructed or commissioned by (a journalist) or anyone at the Mail On Sunday or the Daily Mail to conduct unlawful information gathering on their behalf” in a separate statement in March 2023.
Mr Burrows, who was initially a witness for the group, is now the subject of legal arguments about whether or not he will be called as a witness for the trial.
Antony White KC, for ANL, asked the court to allow him to cross-examine Mr Burrows, while David Sherborne, for the group, made an application to call his evidence as hearsay.
Mr Justice Nicklin gave Mr Sherborne seven days to decide whether he wanted to apply for a witness summons to call Mr Burrows, and told him if Mr Burrows gave evidence that was inconsistent with the evidence they had obtained, then he could apply to treat him as “hostile”.
A further pre-trial hearing in the case is expected to take place before the end of the year.
