Ireland's Irish Daily Star In Jeopardy After Publishing Topless Kate Middleton Photos

Those taking a stand against publishing topless photos of Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton have let Ireland's Irish Daily Star have it square in the fiscal daddy-bag.

Northern & Shell chairman Richard Desmond has pulled his financial report from the tabloid after the printing last week of candid, covertly taken photos of the wife of Britain's Prince William, The International Business Times reports.

Taken while the couple vacationed in France, the British Royal Family was so put off with the published photos that St. James's Palace levied a legal threat against France's Closer Magazine that had the French tabloid issuing a half-hearted apology and yanking the photos from its website.

The scandal comes less than two months on the heels of nude photos of William's brother Prince Harrying surfacing online and in print from an early-August weekend of Las Vegas partying.

"I am very angry at the decision to publish these photographs and am taking immediate steps to close down the joint venture," Desmond said. "The decision to publish these pictures has no justification whatever, and Northern & Shell condemns it in the strongest possible terms."

With no such fears as apparently caused Closer to pull back, Italian tabloid Chi - which is owned by the same company as the French publication - is set to print the same pictures Monday with the bold headline, "The Queen is nude."

Desmond and his company weren't aware that Irish Daily Star editor Michael O'Kane had approved printing the photos, the chairman said. O'Kane argues that the Royal Family's stroke stops short at England's border.

"She's not the future Queen of Ireland, so really the only place this is causing fury seems to be in the U.K., and they are very very tasteful pictures," he said.