This was definitely not the greatest week for the British Royal family, due to a naked-photos scandal. Prince Harry was enjoying himself with friends during holiday in the United States when some embarrassing images of him surfaced from a wild night of partying in Las Vegas.

Specifically the two images obtained of Harry, sold for £10,000, were published and leaked online on tuesday night by the american celebrity news website TMZ. The two pictures were both showing the third-in-line to the throne naked in his birthday suite.

In one of the photographs, prince Harry is pictured naked benting over a second person, who also appears to be naked. It is not clear whether the person is male or female. In the other photograph the young prince is also pictured nude, covering his genitals with his hands and wearing only a necklace and a watch while another person, who also appears to be naked, stands close beside him.

TMZ reported that the two images were both taken after a game of strip billiards last weekend at a private suite in the Wynn Resort. The Prince visited Vegas to enjoy himself with some friends, after official business at a charity event in San Diego.

Prince Harry who has now returned to the motherland has some serious explaining to do to the Queen.

A video from the very same trip to Vegas has also been released, showing the Prince racing Ryan Lochte, the US Olympic swimming gold metallist in the pool of a nightclub in the hotel they were staying. Ryan Lochte, who was in Las Vegas in order to celebrate his 28th birthday, admitted that he was ‘surprised’ Prince Harry had challenged him to the race, which of course Ryan won.

Ryan also said that Harry was a great guy, and it has been a honour to have met him. Challenging one of the world’s top sportsmen wasn’t a first for the 27-year-old Prince, since he had managed to beat the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt in a joke race in March during a Caribbean tour.

Although banned to be printed in the United Kingdom, the nude images of Harry were quickly spread worldwide online. The Sun became the first newspaper in Britain to have published the naked images of Prince Harry, despite warnings from the Royal family’s lawyers. Elizabeth Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, claimed The Sun was right to publish the photographs. Elizabeth told Telegraph that “it would be very sad if we lived in a world where you can’t publish that. Even in my MacTaggart tunnel of the last couple of days, i went online and checked and checked out the pictures.”

A palace official, declining to be named in line with protocol, stated that Prince Harry has been on private holiday before, resuming his military duties. For those who don’t know: Harry is a captain in the British Army Air corps. On Wednesday, the British Royal family requested the country’s newspapers not to print the nude images of Prince Harry dancing around excitedly with friends on holiday in Las Vegas.

While now it’s nude pictures that are dominating the headlines, the young Royal is used to controversy. It is not the first time he’s coming into the spotlight. After all, he has the reputation of the ‘wild child’ in the Royal family:

Back in 2002, young Harry earned the nickname ‘Harry Pothead’, given to him by the British Press after admitting to having tried out cannabis and engaging to underage drinking. In January 2002, Prince Charles sent Harry and a friend to visit the Featherstone Lodge Rehabilitation Center in South London for a day in order to learn about the effects of drug-taking.

In 2004, Harry comes once again in the spotlight for wearing a swastika armband to a friend’s ‘Colonial and Native’ themed party. The tabloids exploded with reports that Harry was a Nazi. Clarence House quickly released an apology, saying “Prince Harry has apologized for any offence or embarrassment he has caused. He realizes it was a poor choice of costume.”

His reputation as a wild child was increased when The Sun claimed to have video of a 23-year-old Harry drinking in large gulps from a bottle of vodka, spitting it out on a cap and inhaling the shot through his nose while his friends were cheering him on. His representative made no comments on the incident, claiming it was a ‘private matter’.

Moreover, in 2009 there was additional footage of Harry in which the Prince was calling his fellow Army colleagues by racist or other derogatory names. Prime Minister David Cameron spoke out against his utterances, claiming they were unacceptable things to say. Harry of course quickly apologized for the incident saying he was sorry for any offence his words might have caused.

Image Courtesy of  waynehowes / Shutterstock.com

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This weekend, five more journalists from a Rupert Murdoch-owned British tabloid were arrested as part of an ongoing bribery investigation. The arrested journalists, all from The Sun, were later released, and have yet to be charged with any crimes. (As The Wall Street Journal explained last summer, arrests in the U.K. are often made early in a criminal investigation, and may not be followed by any charges.)

But the arrests have once again raised questions about whether Murdoch’s News Corp. might face prosecution for bribery in the U.S. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Reuters reported last week that U.S. authorities are “stepping up investigations” of the possible bribery by Murdoch employees. An FBI spokeswoman told ProPublica, “We’re aware of the allegations, and we’re looking into it.”

As we noted during the unfolding of the phone hacking scandal last summer, the U.S. has stepped up prosecutions of companies for bribery of foreign officials in recent years, and the fines for these violations can be steep. Companies can face prosecution by the Justice Department if they record bribery payments, or be pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fake record-keeping if they falsify documents to conceal the bribes.

The statute of limitations on civil Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges is five years. The New York Times reported Saturday that it was not clear when the allegations that led to the Sun arrests had taken place, “though some of those arrested have told friends that they were questioned on events from almost a decade ago.”

Those arrested at The Sun included the paper’s chief reporter, chief foreign correspondent and deputy editor. Last month, four other current and former Sun journalists were arrested, including the paper’s crime editor and former managing editor. A police officer, a member of the armed services and an employee of the Ministry of Defense were also arrested this weekend “on suspicion of corruption,” broadening the scope of the investigation from its original focus, bribery of police officers by journalists, to bribery of other officials as well.

The arrests were based on information provided by News Corp.’s Management and Standards Committee, an internal unit created in response to the phone hacking scandal last summer. The committee reports to Joel Klein, a former U.S. assistant attorney general and New York City schools chancellor who is now a News Corp. executive.

Our request for comment from News Corp. this morning was not immediately answered. In a January news release following the earlier arrests, the company reiterated its pledge “that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated.”

The latest arrests, which were accompanied by police searches of the journalists’ homes, have prompted anger and frustration from some British journalists, directed at the police and politicians driving the investigation, and at News Corp. executives. ”Once again, Rupert Murdoch is trying to pin the blame on individual journalists, hoping that a few scalps will salvage his corporate reputation,” the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists told The Guardian.

The Sun’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, called the investigation “a witch-hunt” that threatens press freedom, and said there was “nothing disreputable” about paying for stories. ”Sometimes money changes hands,” Kavanagh wrote in The Sun. “This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad.”

Last summer, the phone-hacking scandal resulted in the closure of another Murdoch-owned publication, the 168-year-old British tabloid News of the World, but News International executive Tom Mockridge reassured staff this weekend that Murdoch had pledged his “total commitment” to continuing to own and publish The Sun.

Murdoch will reportedly fly to London this week.

The publisher of the shuttered News of the World has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in phone-hacking settlements to celebrities, celebrity employees and politicians, including at least $200,000 to actor Jude Law and at least $63,000 to Guy Pelly, a friend of Prince Harry’s, according to the Guardian.

by Lois Beckett, ProPublica, Feb. 13, 2012, 2:46 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   stocklight / Shutterstock.com

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