Princess Diana's interviewer Martin Bashir will not be facing a criminal investigation over the alleged fake documents he showed to the Spencer family to secure an interview with the Princess of Wales.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that they will not pursue the case into the "unlawful activity" pertaining to Diana's Panorama interview in 1995. The police said that they have consulted with lawyers within the force and outside their counsel, as well as the Crown Prosecution Service, and determined that it was no longer appropriate to probe Bashir. In effect, the police said that they will not be taking further action on the claims.
Diana's younger brother, Earl Charles Spencer, said in October 2020 that Bashir may have showed them forged bank statements when they were arranging to do the interview. These documents suggested that someone within Diana's circle was being paid off to speak to the press.
The Earl said that had he known about the forgery, he would have advised his sister not to talk to the journalist. The man who was allegedly being paid off by the Palace was the head of security of the Spencer family, Allan Waller, who said that while his name was on the document he denied receiving a payoff.
Royal experts have said that the Diana's Panorama interview, where she told the world about her husband's affair with Camilla, became the final blow for the Queen. She ordered her son, Prince Charles, to divorce his first wife. Prior to this, the royal family did not want Charles and Diana to dissolve their marriage despite being separated for many years.
In November 2020, a handwritten note, supposedly from Diana, surfaced and stated that her decision to speak with Bashir on national television had nothing to do with the forged documents. BBC previously said that they lost this note but then recanted this statement last year.
Bashir approached Earl Spencer three months before the Panorama interview aired. At that time, Diana's marriage to Charles had collapsed and while she was still recognized as a royal, the Princess of Wales was basically on her own and without the protection of the royal palaces. Two years after the interview, Diana died in a tragic car crash.
According to her brother, BBC has never acknowledged how Bashir secured the interview and instead said that the princess was not misled. He wrote to the BBC director-general to conduct an inquiry and, if possible, apologize to the Princess of Wales "posthumously." Earl Spencer has yet to comment on the statement of the Metropolitan Police.
