Duncan Simcock 🇪🇺🇬🇧🇾🇪#FBPE

Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew's ex-wife, was secretly filmed asking a businessman for £500,000 to "open doors" to Andrew. The businessman was an undercover reporter from the News of the World, a British tabloid. In the video below, she tells him the money will "open up all the channels, whatever you need, whatever you want," and "then you meet Andrew and that's fine." It was May 2010, and Andrew was Britain's trade envoy. She wanted the rest by wire transfer: "If you give me the bank account details, I'll arrange that no problem at all." Before he left, she picked up a $40,000 cash deposit in a black computer bag. The paper ran the footage on May 23. The palace said Andrew was "unaware of the meeting." She apologized the same day for "a serious lapse in judgement." Then the story flipped. In 2016 the reporter, Mazher Mahmood, known as the "Fake Sheikh," was jailed for 15 months for tampering with evidence in a different case. That year she sued the paper's owner. By 2018 she wanted £40 million in lost earnings, including two TV shows. In January 2018, the owner's lawyers called her case "defective and embarrassing" and stood by the story. No ruling on her claim has been reported. If a reporter lies to catch you saying something real, should his paper owe you £40 million?