Quote:

Rupert Murdoch 'could close UK newspapers' if hacking charges brought

Rupert Murdoch could end up taking the "nuclear option" by getting rid of his UK newspaper business, if charges were brought against the company over complicity in alleged phone hacking and bribery of public officials, it has been claimed.

Rupert Murdoch is known to be deeply attached to his British titles Photo: AFP









6:00AM BST 21 Aug 2013
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The media chief is known to be deeply attached to his British titles, which include The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. However, lawyers claim he could end up shutting down the entire British newspaper operation to help preserve the rest of his empire, in the event that the police press charges against the company.

The Telegraph revealed last week that the Metropolitan Police is now treating News UK, the newspaper corporation, as a corporate suspect in its investigations of alleged hacking and bribery at the News of the World.

The probe raises the possibility that corporate charges could be lodged against News UK, which could criminalise the News UK board and have severe knock-on effects on the rest of Mr Murdoch's business interests, especially in the US.

However, the potential case would "go away" altogether if the company News UK ceased to exist, in the same way as the CPS cannot press charges against a person who has died.

Anil Rajani, a white collar crime specialist at IBB Law, said: "News UK can't be charged as a corporate entity if it doesn't exist as a corporation. And if a company is in the process of being wound up, it also counts as a factor against prosecution."

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It has been reported that News Corp said in an internal report that criminal charges against News UK would "kill the company and put 46,000 jobs in jeopardy".
Shutting or selling the UK newspapers would be a drastic move, but it would not be the first time News Corp has taken bold steps to prevent the phone-hacking scandal from contaminating the rest of the company. In 2011 it shut down the News of the World newspaper once the biggest-selling weekly title in Britain and earlier this summer it split the News Corp business into two, cleaving its damaged newspaper and publishing business from its much more profitable film and television operations.
News Corp executives would have to weigh the potential benefits of keeping the prestigious UK newspapers going against the potential risks of News UK losing a criminal lawsuit.
Separating the companies has isolated the problem to some degree, but the publishing business and the film and entertainment business now News Corp and 21st Century Fox respectively still have a number of directors in common.
Analysts fear that a guilty verdict could prompt Ofcom to reassess whether BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster 39pc owned by Mr Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, is "fit and proper" to hold a broadcasting licence.

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Quote:Phone-hacking trial told of Brooks and Coulson's 'six-year affair'

Prosecution says it is revealing relationship to show extent of secrecy and trust
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• Nick Davies
  
• The Guardian, Thursday 31 October 2013 21.20 GMT
  

Phone-hacking trial: Andy Coulson leaves the Old Bailey after hearing details of his secret affair with Rebekah Brooks revealed. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

The prosecution in the phone-hacking trial lobbed an emotional bombshell into the case by stating that Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson had a secret extra-marital affair between 1998 and 2004, whose existence had been revealed in a highly charged note that the crown argued implied an intense bond between the two.
Andrew Edis QC told the Old Bailey jury that the clandestine relationship had come to light when police found a computer in a cupboard at Brooks's London flat on the day of her arrest in July 2011, containing a letter, written by Brooks to Coulson in February 2004, indicating that they had been having an affair for at least six years.
The letter, said Edis, was "elegant, intelligent and well-written" and evidently composed in reply to an attempt by Coulson to end the relationship by introducing new rules to limit their contact, something which had caused her "a great deal of grief".
Brooks and Coulson sat side by side in the dock, staring without expression into the well of the court as Edis read the jury a section of the letter in which Brooks wrote: "The fact is that you are my very best friend. I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you. We laugh and cry together … In fact, without our relationship in my life, I am really not sure how I will cope.
"I'm frightened to be without you but, bearing in mind 'the rules', you will not know how I am doing, and visa versa [sic] … Obviously I can't discuss my worries, concerns, problems at work with you any more."
Edis said that the jury needed to know about the clandestine relationship because the two former editors face charges of conspiracy to hack phones. "The first question, therefore, is how well did they know each other? How much did they trust each other? The fact that they were in this relationship, which was a secret, means that they trusted each other quite a lot with at least that secret. That's why we are telling you about it," the prosecuting QC said.
At that time, Coulson had been married to his wife Eloise Patrick since 2000, and Brooks had been married to the TV actor Ross Kemp since 2002. Brooks was editor of the Sun, and Coulson was editor of the News of the World; previously Coulson had been her deputy at the News of the World, when she edited the Sunday tabloid between 2000 and 2003.
The affair between the two former editors was disclosed on the day that the court heard detailed allegations that Brooks and Coulson had used illegally hacked voicemail messages to expose the extra-marital affairs of Labour ministers John Prescott and David Blunkett and of the trade union leader Andy Gilchrist. The jury was shown a leader column published by the Sun under Brooks's editorship which described Gilchrist as "a lying, cheating, low-life fornicator".
The whole day's proceedings focused on just one of the seven counts on the indictment which alleges that Brooks, Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, the newspaper's former managing editor, and Ian Edmondson, the former news editor, conspired to intercept voicemail messages. All four deny the charges.
The prosecution had disclosed the affair in the context of the hacking of the phone of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old Surrey schoolgirl who went missing on 21 March 2002. The jury was told on Wednesday that the News of the World's specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, has pleaded guilty to intercepting her voicemail.
Edis argued that, although Rebekah Brooks had been on holiday in Dubai during the key week of the Dowler story in April 2002, the nature of her relationship with her deputy, Coulson, was among a number of factors which made it "simply incredible" that she had not been aware of the hacking of Milly's phone.
He said notes kept by Mulcaire showed that he had been tasked to target Milly on 10 April by the former news editor Neville Thurlbeck, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones. Mulcaire had found a message from a recruitment agency, which appeared to invite the missing girl to go for a job interview at a factory in Telford, West Midlands.
In fact, the jury heard, the message had been intended for somebody else with a similar name and similar phone number. Believing they might find Milly alive before the police, the News of the World on 12 April had sent a team of reporters and photographers to the factory. When the visit yielded no sign of the missing girl, Edis said, Thurlbeck and the managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, had both attempted to persuade Surrey police to co-operate on a story and had told police explicitly that they were in possession of voicemail.
The News of the World then published a story on 14 April that quoted verbatim the message from the recruitment agency, though that had been removed from later editions. One of the reporters who was sent to the Telford factory had claimed his expenses for petrol under the heading "Milly Dowler answer phone messages".
"This phone hacking does not seem to have been much of a secret," Edis told the jury. "Was it only the editor who didn't know it had happened?" He said that from Dubai, Brooks had stayed in regular contact by text and phone with Coulson. "It is highly likely that if they were talking about work, they were exchanging confidences and discussing difficulties. The point of that letter is that what Mr Coulson, who was on deck as editor that week, knew, Mrs Brooks knew too."
The jury were also played a tape-recording made by David Blunkett in August 2004 when, as home secretary, he was visited in his office by Coulson who tried to persuade him to confirm that he had been having an affair with a married woman, Kimberly Quinn. Coulson argued that the fact that she was married meant that any newspaper would want to publish the story.
Coulson told Blunkett: "I'm extremely confident about the information." He refused to say how he knew. Edis said Mulcaire's notes and audiotapes that had been found in a News International safe showed Coulson's source in fact was the hacking of messages left by Blunkett.
The jury heard that in their efforts to expose Prescott's extra-marital affair, the News of the World had offered Lord Prescott's lover Tracey Temple £100,000 for her story, hacked the phone of Prescott's special adviser Joan Hammell, and also hacked the phones of two rival journalists, Dennis Rice and Sebastian Hamilton from the Mail on Sunday, in an attempt to steal their story.
Brooks, Coulson and Clive Goodman also deny conspiring to pay money to corrupt public officials. Brooks together with her husband, Charlie Brooks, her PA, Cheryl Carter, and her head of security, Mark Hanna, deny destroying or concealing evidence. The trial continues.

Quote:Andy Coulson told news editor to 'do Calum Best's phone', court hears

Prosecution says former editor of News of the World demanded that his journalists illegally target celebrities
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• Nick Davies
  
• The Guardian, Friday 1 November 2013 20.25 GMT
  

Andy Coulson leaves the Old Bailey. The prosecution alleges that he was part of a hacking strategy at the News of the World. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Andy Coulson sanctioned hacking the phones of royal advisers to Prince Harry, demanded that his journalists illegally target celebrities, and authorised payments to sources he believed were police officers, the prosecution said as the trial of the former editor of the News of the World and seven others entered its third day.
Prosecuting counsel, Andrew Edis QC, added that Coulson had been warned he could face criminal charges for paying police to leak information, that he was directly involved in discussing special payments for the hacking of phone messages, and that in one instance ordered his news editor by email to verify a tip about TV celebrity Calum Best with the instruction: "Do his phone."
The crown argued that the former tabloid editor was part of a phone-hacking strategy at the now closed Sunday tabloid which was "a totally rational but entirely illegal system". Edis said phone hacking was well known to those working for the paper: "There aren't any secrets. Why would there be? They are all working as a team and he's the boss."
Andy Coulson edited the News of the World from 2003 to 2007. After his departure from the newspaper, he became David Cameron's director of communications, eventually working in No 10. On Thursday, the jury in the high-profile trial also heard that he had had a six-year affair with Rebekah Brooks, his predecessor as editor of the News of the World, who is on trial with him.
According to Edis, Coulson's former royal editor, Clive Goodman, had recently given police access to a file of old emails which, it is claimed, show that Goodman's hacking of royal phones was "officially sanctioned" by senior managers including Coulson. The file included the transcript of a message left by Prince Harry, calling from Sandhurst military academy to ask his private secretary to help him write an essay.
Coulson denies charges of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages and to commit misconduct in public office. Goodman, who has been charged with conspiring to commit misconduct in public office, also denies the charge.
Continuing the crown's opening statement at the Old Bailey, Edis showed the jury emails that were allegedly exchanged when Goodman asked Coulson to approve payments to Palace police officers.
On 24 January 2003, Goodman wrote to complain that he had been having "a heck of a time" getting cash payments authorised for a "royal policeman" at St James's Palace who was offering to sell a directory of royal phone numbers: "These people will not be paid in anything other than cash because if they are discovered selling stuff to us, they will end up on criminal charges, as could we."
Three minutes later, Coulson replied: "This is fine." He queried whether they had not already recently bought the directory. Goodman explained: "This is the harder-to-get one which has the Queen's direct lines to her family in it."
The jury was told that Goodman had then produced what he himself described as "a deliberately cryptic credit payment form" which led to £1,000 in cash being paid to a source who was recorded internally under the false name David Farrish and who has not been identified.
Two years later, on 14 May 2005, Goodman wrote again to Coulson asking him to authorise payment of £1,000 "to one of our Palace cops" for a new version of the same royal phone book. Goodman explained: "It is a very risky document for him to nick ... It's one of our normal cash contribution-only players."
Edis told the jury that it was clear "he is paying a policeman to commit a crime". Internal accounts showed that £1,000 in cash was then paid under the heading "confidential research assistance" to a source recorded internally under the false name "Anderson", whose real name has not been found. The jury were told that the emails presented "the clearest possible evidence of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office" and also that they were evidence in relation to phone hacking. Edis showed the jury handwritten notes kept by the News of the World's specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, which suggested that he had used numbers from royal phone directories to listen to voicemail left for members of the royal household, including Sir Michael Peat, private secretary to the Prince of Wales.
Edis told the court that Goodman had asked for special payments to be made to Mulcaire for hacking the royal household and that Coulson in December 2005 had agreed to pay the hacker a weekly retainer of £500 in addition to his existing contract. However, at the end of January 2006, under pressure to cut spending, Coulson had changed his mind. On 3 February, Goodman emailed his editor, pleading to preserve "Matey's weekly payment".
Goodman said the arrangement had produced a list of stories, adding: "A few weeks ago you asked me to find new ways of getting into the family especially William and Harry. I came up with this. It is safe, productive and cost-effective. I'm confident it will become a big story-goldmine if we let it run just a little longer."
Coulson had replied with a single line: "I'm sorry it has to go." Edis told the jury it was significant that the editor had not had to ask for any explanation about Goodman's source. It was, he said, "absolutely clear that Mr Coulson knows what he is talking about." Separately, Edis showed the jury timelines constructed from internal emails and Mulcaire's notes, detailing the hacking of targets including the former Labour minister Charles Clarke, Sir Paul McCartney, the ex-MP Mark Oaten, and Kerry Katona.
In the case of George Best's son Calum, the news editor, Ian Edmondson, emailed Coulson about fears that there might be a leak from inside the newspaper which would allow Calum Best to find out about the story they were planning. Coulson replied: "Do his phone."
Prosecutors disclosed for the first time that Clive Goodman had handed them a file of internal emails which he had downloaded from the News of the World's system following his arrest for phone hacking in August 2006 in an attempt to gather evidence that his own hacking had been "officially sanctioned".
One email included the transcript of a long voice message left by Prince Harry on the phone of his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, pleading for help with an essay he had to write about the Iranian embassy siege.
Goodman then drafted a story which he sent to Coulson, making no reference to the hacked voicemail but saying: "As we know, it's 100% fact."
The jury was told that, as editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks had exchanged emails with a reporter in which she allegedly agreed to pay £4,000 to a serving member of the armed forces for a photograph of Prince William wearing a bikini and a Hawaiian shirt. She had also used email to authorise a total of £40,000 of payments to a senior Ministry of Defence official.
Brooks denies charges of hacking, conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials, and concealing evidence.
The trial continues on Monday.