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Rebekah Vardy has suggested her agent may have leaked stories about Coleen Rooney to the Sun, in a last-minute change of approach on the eve of the looming "Wagatha Christie" libel trial.
The two women are locked in an expensive and increasingly messy libel battle over accusations Ms Vardy passed information from Ms Rooney's private Instagram account to the tabloid. Ms Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denies the accusations by Ms Rooney and is suing Ms Rooney for libel.
Ms Rooney's lawyers had previously claimed that Ms Vardy had leaked information to the Sun either directly or through her friend and agent Caroline Watt "acting on her instruction or with her knowing approval".
Until now Ms Vardy has said she was not responsible for leaking the material and did not know who did. With a week to go until the trial she says she has realised Ms Watt may in fact have handed over information on Ms Rooney to Sun journalists.
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In an updated witness statement Ms Vardy said: “I have to accept that it is possible that she [Ms Watt] may have had some form of involvement that I don’t know about. I still find it hard to believe, given all her denials and her support to me during the case, but I can’t understand why the journalists would indicate otherwise.”
Ms Vardy added: “I find it very hard to accept that Caroline would deceive me in this way. I do not know what to think . . . I am devastated by all this. Not only have I been libelled by Coleen but I have had to face allegations that my close friend has been involved with this, and she is in such a fragile state that I can’t even address it with her properly.”
Ms Vardy has told a UK high court she "did not authorise or condone" her agent to leak the stories, essentially shifting the blame on to her business partner and close friend. The court previously heard how the pair discussed accessing Ms Rooney's Instagram account and talked about selling different stories on the Chelsea soccer player Danny Drinkwater to journalists at the Sun.
Potentially crucial
Ms Rooney’s legal team have struggled to obtain some potentially crucial messages from Ms Vardy and Ms Watt, after a series of accidents that have affected the duo’s electronic devices, the court has been told. Ms Watt accidentally dropped her mobile phone in the North Sea shortly after Ms Rooney’s lawyers requested to search it for messages, the court has heard. Ms Vardy employed an IT expert to back up her WhatsApp messages but the expert lost the password to the data, and a laptop used by Ms Vardy during the period in question has stopped working.
Ms Rooney’s lawyers also say electronic records suggest there was manual deletion of some WhatsApp messages sent between Ms Vardy and Ms Watt. Ms Vardy’s lawyers told the court she had “not destroyed or deliberately lost any documents relevant to this litigation”, which would be a potentially serious legal issue.
In a last-ditch attempt for information, Ms Rooney's lawyers are trying to obtain copies of any conversations that may have taken place between the two women and the Sun journalist Andy Halls. They want the court to require the reporter to hand over his WhatsApp in order to avoid a "seriously unfair trial which is contrary to the interests of justice", arguing that Mr Halls may have the only existing proof that Ms Vardy or Ms Watt leaked stories to him.
In response, the Sun’s lawyers are refusing to disclose information on the basis their journalists will not betray their sources. Ms Rooney’s team are trying to convince a high court judge that gossip stories about Wayne Rooney’s basement flooding are not worthy of the same journalistic protections afforded to more serious investigations.
The case is scheduled to go to trial at the high court on May 9th.
Sting operation
Ms Rooney, the wife of Derby County manager Wayne, ran an elaborate sting operation that led her to claim, in late 2019, that Ms Vardy was the person leaking stories to the Sun.
Ms Vardy says this is a lie and has sued Ms Rooney for libel. An early ruling in a pre-trial hearing means that Ms Rooney is required to prove that it was Ms Vardy who personally leaked fake stories from a private Instagram to the journalists at the Sun, rather than simply someone with access to Ms Vardy’s Instagram account.
Despite the legal process lasting almost three years, Ms Vardy told the court that she had only just realised that her agent could have been leaking stories. Ms Watt was due to give evidence at the trial but now says she is too ill to do so.
Ms Rooney’s lawyers reject this account of the events. They told the court Ms Vardy had been “complicit in the sharing of private information with Ms Watt; complicit in it being passed on to the Sun and the press; and complicit in covering up her and Ms Watt’s involvement”. – Guardian/PA