Paris magazine must pay £92,000 over topless Kate photos
The couple said they were ‘pleased’ at the ruling and described the incident as a ‘serious breach of privacy’.
Their compensation pay-out – the majority of which was levied against French magazine Closer, which published the pictures – will be donated to an undisclosed charity.
Closer’s editor Laurence Piea, 51, and Ernest Mauria, 71, the director of the Mondadori group that publishes the magazine, were also fined £42,000 each. Both could have been sent to prison for up to a year.
It marks the end of a five-year legal battle, in which the angry couple had demanded £1.4million (€1.5million euro) from Closer.
While only a fraction of this sum, the £92,000 (100,000 euros) they have been awarded is still one of the highest payfrom THE Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last night welcomed the decision by a French court to award them £92,000 in damages over topless photographs of Kate. outs in French legal history. In September 2012 William and Kate were photographed by paparazzi using long lens cameras as they relaxed on the terrace of a Provence chateau belonging to Lord Snowdon.
The pictures showed the Duchess walking about wearing only a pair of skimpy bikini bottoms. One particularly intimate image, said to have caused particular upset, showed William rubbing suncream onto his wife.
The incident is understood to have left William feeling like he had failed to protect Kate – something he assured her family he would do.
At the time the photographs were published, William and Kate were on a high profile tour of Malaysia. Aides said they were left angry and humiliated, with William unable to hide his fury, saying a ‘line had been crossed’.
‘He was incandescent with rage,’ one source told the Mail. ‘He said he had told Kate’s family, when they got married a year earlier that he would protect her and felt like he had let them down at the first hurdle. It was clear that he felt helpless and frustrated.’
One royal aide added that William felt like the ‘clock had been turned back 15 years’. In a statement in May, William said the impact of the topless photographs were ‘all the more painful’ given the harassment linked to the death of his mother, Diana.
Six defendants were in the dock in Nanterre, Paris. Cyril Moreau and Dominique Jacovides, two agency photographers, werefined £4,500 each, with half the amount suspended for two years. Both denied ever taking the topless pictures. Valerie Suau, a photographer newspaper La Provence – which also published the photographs, was fined just over £900. The newspaper’s publishing director Marc Auburtin was told to pay £2,750 compensation directly to the couple. All of the defendants said the Royal couple were hypocrites because they regularly allow information about their private lives to be sold around the world. Yesterday Kensington Palace – which has who had always made clear the couple were seeking a moral rather than financial victory – said in a statement: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are pleased that the court has found in their favour and the matter is now closed. This incident was a serious breach of privacy, and Their Royal Highnesses felt it essential to pursue all legal remedies. They wished to make the point strongly that this kind of unjustified intrusion should not happen.’