An official inquiry has been launched into the suspected interception of voicemail messages around the tabloid newspaper story of the French model and her alleged affair with former England football captain John Terry.
The inquiry, which is being led from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), will cause concern in Fleet Street, where newspapers and the Press Complaints Commission have insisted that this kind of illegal activity has been stamped out since the jailing of a News of the World reporter in January 2007.
The evidence focuses on the phone records of Vanessa Perroncel and of one of her close friends, Antonia Graham. Perroncel was accused by tabloids of having an affair with Terry.
One allegation involves the interception of a live telephone call between the two women, a more serious offence than listening to phone messages.
In her first interview since the story broke, published in the Guardian today, Perroncel, the former partner of the Manchester City and England footballer Wayne Bridge, says of her experience at the hands of the tabloid pack: "It is horrible. It is like a nightmare. Every day you think: 'What else are they going to say about me?' It is so intrusive and so false. Every day, so many lies – and then people making judgments because of the lies."
Her lawyers this week formally warned seven national newspapers that she is moving to sue them for breach of privacy over reports that claimed to expose her personal life, including her sexual relationships, her medical history, her finances and her wider family's personal problems.
She is also planning to sue for libel over stories about her alleged promiscuity as well as claims that she tried to sell her story for up to £250,000 and that she sold her silence to John Terry for as much as £800,000.
Perroncel's claims about her treatment links to wider concerns about the behaviour of the media, with the unfolding scandal of phone hacking at the News of the World and the recent publication of a highly critical report by the House of Commons media committee.
Its Conservative chairman, John Whittingdale, said in February that the MPs had been assured that newspapers were no longer involved in intercepting communications. "We would be extremely anxious if further evidence should emerge," he said.
The IC, reveals O's investigations department is currently working with Vodafone, which has confirmed that somebody made an attempt to access Antonia Graham's voicemail in early February, during the second week of the tabloid storm around John Terry, at a time when she was in regular contact with Perroncel. Separately, O2 has been asked to investigate suspicious activity on Perroncel's own mobile phone during the same period.
Perroncel's lawyers are also seeking an inquiry into possible interception of live phone calls. They are particularly concerned about the origin of a widely used quote from Perroncel, when she was alleged to have told a journalist: "They're saying I'm some kind of bed-hopping sex maniac. It's so hurtful – and it's not true."
Perroncel says she refused to speak to journalists but that the quote is an accurate account of what she said – in a private phone call to Antonia Graham.
Perroncel told the Guardian: "Antonia did not sell that quotation. I know she does not do that. So how did they get it? There have been other times when the same thing has happened: a conversation with a friend ends up word for word in the paper."
There is no current evidence to indicate who was responsible for any interception, whether it may have been a newspaper or somebody acting on a paper's behalf or a completely unrelated person.
A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: "This incident has been reported to us, and we are looking into it, together with Vodafone, to establish whether an offence has taken place." Depending on its findings, the ICO may pass the inquiry on to the police.
After weeks of increasingly aggressive stories about Perroncel's private life, her lawyers have sent formal "letters before action" for breach of privacy to the News of the World and the Sun; the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday People; the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. Perroncel says in the interview that she was reluctant to sue.
"No one sues these papers. You see all these ludicrous stories which they publish. I have been told by many people that you don't sue the papers."
She considered going to the Press Complaints Commission but decided not to. "There are too many newspaper editors who sit on it," she says. "From these same papers. It's a conflict of interest. Who would trust them?"
Perroncel's lawyer, Charlotte Harris of JMW Solicitors, said: "Suing is a last resort.
"We hoped the newspapers would stop behaving in this way, this vilification. But in the end, we have no option but to get tough."