This emerged Tuesday on the opening day of the trial of six media representatives for invasion of privacy in Nanterre outside Paris.
According to the AFP, French gossip magazine Closer and regional newspaper La Provence in September 2012 published long-lens photos of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the south of France, triggering outrage in Britain.
The prosecution in the invasion of privacy trial called for “very significant fines” over the grainy pictures, while a lawyer for Closer said the royal couple wanted 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) in damages.
The lawyer Paul-Albert Iweins insisted that the photos showed a “positive image of the couple” and criticised an “Anglo-Saxon reasoning of damages and interest”.
The pair were snapped on a break at a chateau owned by Viscount David Linley, the son of Princess Margaret, the late sister of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
One of the most intimate shots, which were offered to some publications but not published in Britain, shows the Duchess of Cambridge topless and having suncream rubbed into her buttocks by husband William.
Laurence Pieau, Closer’s editor in France, Ernesto Mauri, chief executive of the Mondadori group which owns the magazine, and Cyril Moreau and Dominique Jacovides, two Paris-based agency photographers suspected of taking the pictures, face charges of invasion of privacy and complicity at the trial in Nanterre outside Paris.
La Provence’s publishing director at the time, Marc Auburtin, and photographer Valerie Suau are also standing trial.
The case had been delayed for four months to give the lawyer for the agency photographers more time to prepare their defence.
The case was being heard shortly after the royal couple visited Paris in March.
Pieau defended her publication’s actions at the time of the scandal, saying the pictures of Kate, now 35, were not in the “least shocking”.
