THE EVENTS OF the last week and, specifically, those at the London based headquarters of The News of the World cannot have failed but leave a bad taste in your mouth. The pursuit of being the first to the latest news story has trawled new depths and the final publication of the paper tommorow will hopefully see the end of the outrageous lengths that certain journalists will go to in order to get the story.
I have lived in the public eye for the best part of sixteen years - not by choice but because, on the 23 February 1995, I fled Singapore after racking up £862m worth of losses at Barings Bank and very suddenly became very newsworthy. Not only were Interpol chasing me around South East Asia but all of the world’s media were falling over themselves to get a story. Pictures of my arrest made the front pages of Time and Newsweek in the same week.
Luckily for me, the journalists didn’t get hold of me. I was arrested at Frankfurt airport and immediately placed in prison. Safe, if you like, and protected from everybody who was desperate for an insight into what had happened. My friends and family weren’t so lucky. Unable to get to me, the media circus shifted to anywhere I had been previously and stories were very aggressively sought.
Long before David Haye assumed the nickname ‘The Hayemaker’, my father was confronted by a journalist from the Daily Mirror looking for a story about his son, the one imprisoned in Frankfurt. He responded the only way that he knew how, demanding that he leave immediately and helping him on his way with his own version of the haymaker. Other friends were offered serious sums of money to ‘spill the beans’. A picture could be sold for a sum in the region of £10-15K whilst a story with a bit of scandal would attract a great deal more. Take up was sparse but there were one or two stories that did make the papers.
I can look back on those times and recount how invasive that period was for many of my friends and family. My initial reaction was that it was out of order but, on reflection, it was mild compared to quite how dangerously out of control certain journalists have become. Hacking mobile phones in pursuit of a story is as sinister as it can be.
On mature reflection I subsequently thought that, in the absence of getting a quote or story from me, anything was fair game. Journalists have a job to do, they work under their own set of pressures to perform and I could ultimately understand the method that they used. Let’s face it - I had propelled my name into the media world through my own stupid actions and this was just one of the consequences.
Some of the stories though were ridiculous. One day shortly after being sentenced in Singapore, I was ushered out of my cell at 8am in the morning. I was pushed into a room wedged tight with officials from the police and both English and Singaporean investigators into the collapse of Barings. They looked content; four had travelled specifically from the UK for this meeting.
For the next hour I was subjected to some innuendo about a secret account that they had found and was repeatedly asked to come clean. I couldn’t do that as I had no idea what they were talking about. I began to lose patience and eventually asked them to produce what proof they had. Rather smugly, they dug deep in their briefcases and brought out a copy of the leading English broadsheet of the time and showed me the front page headline which read ‘ Leeson’s £50 million bank account’. I laughed, told them that it wasn’t a bank statement and until they had
one I wasn’t answering any more questions. I never saw them again.
Years later I met the ‘investigative’ journalist who wrote this piece and many others. He wanted to know which of the stories was worst in terms of factual content; he knew there were many. I recounted the example above and asked where the story came from. It was given to the paper by a private investigator, made the front page and was never verified, he admitted. A million miles from the absolutely depraved actions we have seen from some journalists in more recent times, but still questionable in the extreme.
Nobody will lose any sleep over the News of the World issuing its last publication tomorrow. I firmly hope that News International and Rupert Murdoch resist any temptation to launch another paper in its place. This sorry chapter should be the final ending.
A number of journalists will now likely face criminal charges for their vile actions. I struggle to think of anything more heinous. I spent time in two different prisons for my actions, and both worked upon an inmate hierarchy that was fairly easy to understand: anyone convicted of a sexual crime or a crime against children or – worse still – a combination of the two, was at the bottom of the pile. They were subjected to constant verbal and physical abuse.
If convicted, these journalists face a similar fate, as I can’t see how the unscrupulous, depraved hacking of murdered victim’s phones will be viewed as anything better.
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