Prince Harry and Elton John are among six public figures who have sued the publisher of the Daily Mail, accusing the British tabloid of illegally obtaining information about them, their lawyers said on Thursday, AFP reported.

According to the lawyers, the group “has become aware of compelling and extremely painful evidence that they have been victims of (…) serious breaches of privacy” by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

Along with Prince Harry and Elton John – director David Furnish, actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, as well as Doreen Lawrence, the mother of British teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered on a racist basis in 1993.

The latter also filed a lawsuit against media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s group, which publishes the tabloid The Sun.

According to lawyers for the six plaintiffs, ANL hired private investigators to listen to the six people in their cars or homes.

They also allege that payments were made to police officers “connected to private investigators” to obtain information, that medical records were “obtained by deception” and that bank accounts and financial information were accessed “through illegal means and manipulation.” .

“We completely and unequivocally deny these grotesque smears, which appear to be nothing more than a planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Daily Mail’s headlines into a wiretapping scandal based on stories dating back 30 years,” ANL said.

A decade ago, the British tabloid press was rocked by several wiretapping scandals in the early 2000s.

At the start of the business, in 2005, there was the interception of the e-mails of the partners of Princes William and Harry, but the hype reached a climax in the summer of 2011 when the tabloid News of the World intercepted the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl, Millie Dowler, who was eventually found dead.

The revelations led to the closure of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid, which paid £2 million out of court to the family of Millie Dowler.

While many celebrities have sued tabloids after being eavesdropped, this is the first time such a case has been brought against the publisher of the Daily Mail.