Gossip magazine bought credit card info on royals, celebrities

Denmark’s most notorious gossip magazine, See&Hear (Se og Hør in Danish), is being investigated by the police after claims that editors paid an IT specialist to monitor celebrities’ and members of the royal family’s credit card transactions, reports Seven59.dk and other media.

According to tabloid daily BT, over a 4-year period See&Hear journalists were provided with confidential information about flight reservations, hotel bookings, and private hospital expenses concerning royals such as Prince Joachim and his wife, Princess Marie, the Queen’s consort Prince Henrik, and numerous TV and film celebrities.

Commentators are comparing the revelations, contained in a new book by former See&Hear journalist Ken B. Rasmussen, to the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World, the UK’s biggest-selling Sunday paper.

Access to confidential credit card information

The book is a roman à clef, a work of fiction that purports to describe real life characters and events, but BT claims the allegations are true after conducting an intensive investigation and has proof that an IT employee at the Danish card payment services company, NETS, passed on confidential credit card information.

Social Liberal MEP Morten Helveg Petersen, who according to BT is one of a number of politicians whose confidential credit card information was supplied to the magazine, threatened to sue if the allegations prove to be true.

Read the original article (in Danish) on politiken.dk.

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