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A private investigator integral to the lawsuit brought by the Duke of Sussex and several claimants against the publisher of the Daily Mail has claimed his autograph on an earlier witness statement was a “fake”, the high court has been told.

Gavin Burrows, linked to the gravest accusations of unlawful information gathering made by multiple well-known personalities including the music icon and Doreen Lawrence, withdrew his supposed admission, saying it was “entirely untrue”.

Background of the Purported Statement

Burrows had supposedly claimed in a testimonial from 2021 that he and his crew acquired intel by accessing voice messages, intercepting home telephones and placing listening devices in vehicles. He also reportedly said he had been employed on behalf of the Mail on Sunday.

The publishing group is charged by the plaintiffs of carrying out or authorizing illicit operations such as employing PIs to position bugs inside cars, deceptively obtaining private records and gaining entry to confidential calls. The company denies the claims and is contesting the lawsuit.

Retraction and Fresh Claims

Several of the claimants have stated to the high court they commenced the legal action against the media group based on evidence allegedly gathered by Burrows.

Burrows had earlier retracted his alleged testimony in 2023. In a recent lengthy testimonial document made on a recent date, and made public by the court on Tuesday, he reiterated his rejection, saying he had never performed any illegal activity on behalf of the publishing group.

In the recent statement, he claimed he did “not identify” the supposed witness statement on that date”. He said he believed it was “drafted by someone else”, that the “signature is not mine”, and did “not accept the veracity of a great deal of the information”.

Burrows declared: “I do not recognise the prior testimony of 16 August 2021 and I think that my autograph on that paper is a fabrication. A great deal of it is not composed in my type of language. Moreover, the contents of the statement are mostly false.”

He stated further that he had “at no time” performed work for the Sunday paper or the daily tabloid, except for one task relating to Sir Richard Branson that was free from any illicit behavior”.

Circumstances of the Original Testimony

Burrows stated he was on strong analgesics after a serious physical assault, and drinking heavily, when he was reached out to by a former journalist, a whistleblower convicted of phone hacking, who desired assistance with inquiry on phone-hacking claims targeting publications.

He was connected to a contact, Dan Waddell, who was identified as a legal assistant and was paid £600 a session for counsel.

His testimony claimed he was told claims targeting newspapers were expected to resolve privately, as the publications did not want the attention or expense of a trial, and were portrayed to him as a “flawless fraud” and a “lucrative opportunity”.

Burrows, who claimed he had discontinued working for newspapers in that year, stated he had told Johnson repeatedly that the publisher were not one of my customers”.

Current Legal Situation

The witness was initially a witness for the group, which features Sadie Frost and others, but is now the focus of legal arguments about the possibility that he will be called as a testifier for the proceedings.

A barrister, for the defendant, petitioned the court to permit him to question Burrows, while another barrister, for the group, made an application to treat his testimony as secondhand information.

The judge allowed the barrister one week to choose whether he wanted to seek a witness summons to summon the witness, and advised him if the witness provided evidence that was inconsistent with the information they had acquired, then he could petition to regard him as “hostile”.

A subsequent pre-trial hearing in the legal action is anticipated to take place before the end of the year.