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An American private investigator has admitted to the High Court that he engaged in unlawful activities concerning the Duke of Sussex while working for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, though he cannot recall the specific details. The investigator, Dan Portley-Hanks, provided a written statement as part of the evidence for legal proceedings initiated by Prince Harry and several other well-known individuals against the publisher Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).
Portley-Hanks, who worked for ANL-related publications from the early 1990s until the early 2010s and is now 79 years old, is among seven prominent claimants accusing the publisher of significant privacy infringements over the past two decades. ANL has denied any wrongdoing. Other notable claimants include Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, who both claim to have been victims of illegal information gathering.
Known as Detective Danno, Portley-Hanks explained that he became a private investigator after answering an advertisement offering comprehensive training shortly after his release from prison in 1979. He initially established his own business before working as an in-house investigator for two US news programs. By the mid-1990s, due to the frequency of calls from British newspapers, he started offering data services independently to British tabloid reporters. His most frequent and lucrative clients were journalists Caroline Graham and Sharon Churcher of the Mail on Sunday, who regularly asked him to locate phone numbers and other private information quickly.
In his statement, Portley-Hanks described how he gathered detailed data, including phone records and communications between celebrity couples such as Lewis Hamilton and Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Lopez and Chris Judd, and Kylie Minogue with Olivier Martinez. He also confirmed supplying information that coincided with Mail on Sunday headlines appearing shortly afterward. Regarding Prince Harry, he stated, “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.”
Portley-Hanks revealed that Churcher asked him to send money to a former police officer, which was then used to pay a serving officer for access to confidential files related to Jeffrey Epstein. He was also tasked with tracing one of Epstein’s victims, identified only by the name “Virginia.” Toward the end of his statement, Portley-Hanks expressed remorse, saying he wanted to “do the right thing before I die” and acknowledged the emotional toll his actions had caused him.
In response, ANL’s legal counsel Antony White KC strongly denied that Prince Harry had been subjected to illegal information gathering. White argued that there was no concrete evidence to support the alleged confessions by Portley-Hanks and suggested that evidence presented had been influenced by financial incentives or intimidation. He also noted that no specific accusations involved journalist Graham, and regarding the claim of corrupt payments to a police officer, White pointed out that the related documents had been publicly sourced from civil proceedings involving Epstein. The lawyer maintained that the incident did not prove any unlawful commission or use of information.
The legal proceedings are expected to conclude in March, with a written judgment to be delivered at a later date
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