Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

I wonder if these arrests are not related to this...[URL="https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?3260-Phone-hacking-scandal-deepens&p=41735#post41735"]https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?3260-Phone-hacking-scandal-deepens&p=41735#post41735

[/URL]Otherwise why is her hubby arrested for Newscorp business of which he wasn't on the payroll of?

Magda - I agree.

On learning that hubbie Charlie Brooks was also arrested, and that Rebekah and he have been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, my first thought was that this "computer, paperwork and mobile" may very well have revealed evidence of corruption.

Note how specific Scotland Yard's current investigator, Sue Akers, was to Leveson:

"The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials," she said. "Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists."

"A network of corrupted officials" was providing the Sun with stories that were mostly "salacious gossip", she said.

"There appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money."

Akers said the 61-strong Elveden investigation was still at a relatively early stage in trying to identify the recipients of illicit cash: "The emails indicate that payments to 'sources' were openly referred to within the Sun … there is a recognition by the journalists that this behaviour is illegal, reference being made to staff 'risking losing their pension or job', to the need for 'care' and to the need for 'cash payments'. There is also an indication of 'tradecraft', ie hiding cash payments to 'sources' by making them to a friend or relative of the source."

It is implicit in the DNA of senior cops not to go beyond the evidence when on the record in a public forum.

For Akers to say this to Leveson, prior to a trial, she MUST have significant corroborating evidence.

Most likely, a paper trail.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ah - a truthteller, describing the expectation that he would bribe coppers whilst working for the Murdoch crime family.

Crime Reporters' Association president Jeff Edwards was chief crime correspondent of the Daily Mirror for 15 years and was been a journalist on national papers and TV for 35 years. As well as his role at the CRA, he has been an associate lecturer at the Police Staff College at Bramshill, Hants.

Edwards joined the News of the World in 1981 and was soon appointed as crime correspondent. He says that Sunday newspapers operate in a different environment to daily titles.

"It became apparent that I wasn't doing the job to the satisfaction of my then boss, my news editor. He became quite animated about this issue. We had a discussion one day … and he said to me 'You've got to up your game' … and I said 'It's really difficult' … he said there's money available you should be out there spending it on your contacts. I said, 'I'm sorry ,what are you suggesting?'. He said 'You know, you need to put some inducements out there.'

He adds:

"About three or four weeks later clearly my performance was still not satisfactory; he took me to one side … and said to me 'Have you taken up my suggestion?' He said … 'You should essentially be bribing more police officers.' I said 'I didn't come into journalism to do that sort of thing' … A couple of weeks later I was removed from post and replaced."

12.52pm: Edwards says some News of the World reporters "played very fast and loose with the truth" and he has heard anecdotal evidence that sources would be paid "in other areas of public life".

He left the News of the World in 1985.

12.54pm: Edwards joined the Daily Mirror in 1986. He says it was "different altogether" from the News of the World. "There was a very high ethical standard there," he adds.

[Jan Klimkowski]

More Murdoch mafioso shenanigans.

Leverage.

Blackmail.

Intimidation.

Private investigators posed as journalists for NoW, says lawyer

Charlotte Harris, acting for phone hacking victims, says investigators compiled 'vast' dossier on her private life

Josh Halliday

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012 17.00 GMT


Harris told MPs the dossier contained pictures of her home and information about her 'private life, political affiliations, career aspirations.'

Charlotte Harris, the lawyer acting for several phone-hacking victims, fears that private investigators posed as journalists to solicit information about her for the News of the World.

Speaking after giving evidence to a select committee of MPs on Tuesday, Harris said she was "disconcerted" to find details of telephone conversations she had with people identifying themselives as journalists in a secret dossier compiled by private investigators allegedly on behalf of the now-defunct News of the World.

"I suspect that private investigators posed as journalists as part of this surveillance and what I said over the phone to them ended up in the report that I find disconcerting," Harris told the Guardian.

The solicitor earlier told the Commons home affairs committee that private investigators had compiled a "vast" dossier of "gossip" about her private life in 2010, when she acted on behalf of several alleged victims of phone hacking by the News of the World. Harris told MPs that News Corporation's management and standards committee (MSC) had passed some details about her surveillance to Scotland Yard.

Harris, a partner at solicitors firm Mishcon de Reya, told MPs on Tuesday she was targeted because she had "stumbled across a ream of activity that News International didn't want to come out". She added: "The police showed me the file and it was vast. I say it was vast it was vast compared to evidence I've seen on other people.

"It was clear [that] basically the idea of the report was to find out private information about the main lawyers who were involved in the phone-hacking litigation, private information between them ... it looked a bit like a gossip draft."

She told MPs the dossier contained pictures of her home and information about her "private life, political affiliations, career aspirations, how well people got on".

Tom Crone, the former head of legal for the Sun and News of the World, told the Leveson inquiry in December that he agreed the newsdesk of the now-closed Sunday tabloid should "have a look" at Harris and Mark Lewis, another lawyer for alleged phone-hacking victims, in early 2010.

However, he told the inquiry he believed that Derek Webb, the private investigator who put the pair under surveillance, was a freelance journalist and not a private investigator.

[Magda Hassan]

Brooks held in phone-hacking probe

March 13, 2012 - 9:19PM

• Read later
  

Rebekah Brooks ... arrested. Photo: AFP

Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband are among six suspects arrested today by detectives investigating phone hacking at News International.
The former News International chief executive and Charlie Brooks were arrested at their Oxfordshire home on Tuesday on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, sources said.
Police are searching several addresses after conducting dawn raids in London, Hampshire and Hertfordshire, Scotland Yard said.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Ms Brooks, a former editor of The Sun, had been on bail after being questioned by detectives last summer on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption.
Today's arrest come after her lawyer, Stephen Parkinson, said evidence given by Sue Akers at the Leveson Inquiry had brought much prejudicial material'' into the public domain.




Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/brooks-held-...z1ozcSiq9h

Speaking of crickets and deafening silence.....

[Peter Lemkin]

Ah but she has such a nice photogenic head of hair!:popworm:And friends in high places. And the dirt on other people in high places that keeps all very hush-hush:nono:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Business as War.

All's fair in Love and Business...

Of course, a Murdoch tool writing for a Murdoch organ said the Dirty Digger never met Maggie Thatcher at a certain crucial time, and that became Official History for a couple of decades....

Now we learn that ONdigital, the rival to Murdoch's UK satellite and cable empire, dead and buried in a deep grave, never to return, may have been "done over" as below...

Questions for News Corp over rival's collapse

Software company NDS allegedly cracked smart card codes of ONdigital, according to evidence to be broadcast on Panorama

David Leigh

guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 March 2012 22.23 BST



Part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation empire employed computer hacking to undermine the business of its chief TV rival in Britain, according to evidence due to be broadcast by BBC1's Panorama programme on Monday .

The allegations stem from apparently incriminating emails the programme-makers have obtained, and on-screen descriptions for the first time from two of the people said to be involved, a German hacker and the operator of a pirate website secretly controlled by a Murdoch company.

The witnesses allege a software company NDS, owned by News Corp, cracked the smart card codes of rival company ONdigital. ONdigital, owned by the ITV companies Granada and Carlton, eventually went under amid a welter of counterfeiting by pirates, leaving the immensely lucrative pay-TV field clear for Sky.

The allegations, if proved, cast further doubt on whether News Corp meets the "fit and proper" test required to run a broadcaster in Britain. It emerged earlier this month that broadcasting regulator Ofcom has set up a unit called Project Apple to establish whether BSkyB, 39.1% owned by News Corp, meets the test.

Panorama's emails appear to state that ONdigital's secret codes were first cracked by NDS, and then subsequently publicised by the pirate website, called The House of Ill Compute THOIC for short. According to the programme, the codes were passed to NDS's head of UK security, Ray Adams, a former police officer. NDS made smart cards for Sky. NDS was jointly funded by Sky, which says it never ran NDS.

Lee Gibling, operator of THOIC, says that behind the scenes, he was being paid up to £60,000 a year by Adams, and NDS handed over thousands more to supply him with computer equipment.

He says Adams sent him the ONdigital codes so that other pirates could use them to manufacture thousands of counterfeit smart cards, giving viewers illicit free access to ONdigital, then Sky's chief business rival.

Gibling says he and another NDS employee later destroyed much of the computer evidence with a sledgehammer. After that NDS continued to send him money, he says, until the end of 2008, when he was given a severance payment of £15,000 with a confidentiality clause attached. An expert hacker, Oliver Koermmerling, who cracked the codes in the first place, says on the programme that he, like Gibling, had been recruited on NDS's behalf by Adams.

The potentially seismic nature of these pay-TV allegations was underlined over the weekend, when News Corp's lawyers, Allen & Overy, sought to derail the programme in advance by sending round denials and legal threats to other media organisations. They said any forthcoming BBC allegations that NDS "has been involved in illegal activities designed to cause the collapse of a business rival" would be false and libellous, and demanded they not be repeated.

On the programme, former Labour minister Tom Watson, who has been prominent in pursuit of Murdoch over the separate News of the World phone-hacking scandals, predicts that Ofcom could not conceivably regard the Murdochs as "fit and proper" to take full control of Sky, if the allegations were correct.

James Murdoch, who is deputy chief operating officer of News Corp and chairman of BSkyB, was a non-executive director of NDS when ONdigital was hacked. There is no evidence, the BBC says, that he knew about the events alleged by Panorama.

Gibling told the programme: "There was a meeting that took place in a hotel and Mr Adams, myself and other NDS representatives were there … and it became very clear there was a hack going on."

He claimed: "They delivered the actual software to be able to do this, with prior instructions that it should go to the widest possible community … software [intended] to be able to activate ONdigital cards. So giving a full channel line-up without payment."

Gibling says that when fellow pirates found out in 2002 that he was being secretly funded by NDS, THOIC was hastily closed down and he was told by Adams's security unit to make himself scarce.

"We sledgehammered all the hard drives." He says he was told to go into hiding abroad.

Kommerling says he was recruited by Adams in 1996. "He looked at me and said 'Could you imagine working for us?'"

Kommerling was told the NDS marketing department were "looking into the competitors' products" and he cracked the codes for the system used by ONdigital, which came from the French broadcaster Canal Plus.

Later he recognised the codes cracked by his own NDS team, when they got out on to the internet. They appeared on a Canadian pirate site with an identical timestamp: "The timestamp was like a fingerprint," he says.

NDS published its own response to the programme's allegations before transmission, saying: "It is simply not true that NDS used the THOIC website to sabotage the commercial interests of ONdigital/ITV digital or indeed any rival."

NDS admits Gibling was in its pay, but says it was using THOIC as a legitimate undercover device. "NDS paid Lee Gibling for his expertise so information from THOIC could be used to trap and catch hackers and pirates," NDS said.

The company does not dispute the allegations that it got its own hands on ONdigital's secret codes, which was not itself illegal, and that the material was passed on to Adams, its security chief. But NDS says there is an innocent explanation "as part of the fight against pay-TV piracy".

According to NDS: "All companies in the conditional access industry … come to possess codes that could enable hackers to access services for free." This is for the purpose of "research and analysis". They claim that it was part of Adams' job to "liaise with other pay-TV providers" and therefore "it was right and proper for Mr Adams to have knowledge of … codes that could be used by hackers".

The company added: "NDS has never authorised or condoned the posting of any code belonging to any competitor on any website." Adams has denied he ever had the codes.

In 2002 Canal Plus, which supplied ONdigital with its smart card system, sued NDS in a US Court, alleging that NDS had hacked its codes. But no evidence about a link to ONdigital emerged: the case was dropped following a business deal under which Murdoch agreed to purchase some of Canal Plus's assets.

ONdigital briefly became ITV Digital before it went under.

[Peter Lemkin]

Murdoch TV Empire Accused of Rampant Criminality
28th March 2012

"Media claims that News Corp. promoted the pirating of its pay TV rivals are serious and any allegations of criminality should be referred to the police for investigation, the Australian government said Wednesday. … "
Murdoch TV empire accused of dirty tricks
By Karen Kissane

Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2012

phonehack blog main horizontal 300x225 Murdoch TV Empire Accused of Rampant CriminalityRUPERT MURDOCH'S TV media empire is being accused of corporate espionage, computer hacking and piracy in a campaign that allegedly destroyed a rival to the lucrative British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

News Corporation's then-software security arm, NDS, recruited a hacker to unlock its competitors' smartcards in 1996, the BBC's investigative program Panorama has claimed.

The cards have a microchip and pay-TV subscribers put them into a set-top box to allow them to receive pay-TV channels. If pirated, they allow viewers to get the channels free and the pay-TV provider loses hundreds of millions in revenue.

Witnesses on Panorama alleged that NDS hired a top computer hacker to crack the codes of a rival company, ONdigital, which eventually collapsed amid a bonanza of counterfeiting. This left the pay-TV field in Britain clear for Sky, which is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corp.

News Corp almost wholly owned NDS at the time and Murdoch heir-apparent James sat on its board. While there has been no claim that he knew anything about the alleged espionage, the accusations are likely to be considered by the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom as part of its present inquiry into whether News Corp and James Murdoch pass the "fit and proper" test of suitability to run a broadcaster.

The Ofcom investigation was set up in the wake of the scandal about phone-hacking and bribery allegations at News mastheads in London, The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World. This is the first time scandal has spread to the empire's vast television interests.

News Corp said in a statement it fully accepted NDS's assurance there had been no wrongdoing. It added: "The United States Department of Justice, a federal court jury and a federal appellate court have all rejected allegations … that NDS was either responsible for TV piracy or for distributing codes to facilitate piracy. Moreover, the United States Court ordered NDS's accuser to pay $19 million to cover NDS's legal fees and costs."

The Panorama program aired emails that apparently showed that the codes of ONdigital were first cracked by a hacker named Oliver Koermmerling. He told the program he had been hired by NDS's head of UK security, Ray Adams.

Panorama alleged the codes were publicised by the world's biggest pirate website, the House of Ill Compute (THOIC).

Lee Gibling, who ran THOIC, said Mr Adams sent him the ONdigital codes so other pirates could use them to make thousands of counterfeit smartcards.

He said he was being paid £60,000 a year by Mr Adams and was given thousands more to buy computer equipment. The site had sent people update codes: "We wanted them to stay and keep on with ONdigital, flogging it until it broke."

ONdigital, later renamed ITV Digital, lost more than a £1 billion, and 1500 staff lost their jobs when it collapsed in 2002.

Mr Gibling said he and another employee later destroyed much of the computer evidence by smashing hard drives with a sledgehammer.

News Corp's lawyers, Allen & Overy, denied the claims even before the program was aired. They told media organisations that the claims NDS "has been involved in illegal activities designed to cause the collapse of a business rival" would be false and libellous and demanded they not be repeated.

NDS also issued emphatic denials: "It is simply not true that NDS used the THOIC website to sabotage the commercial interests of ONdigital/ITV digital or, indeed, any rival."

The company admitted Mr Gibling was in its pay but says it was using THOIC as a legitimate undercover device: "NDS paid Lee Gibling for his expertise so information from THOIC could be used to trap and catch hackers and pirates."

The company does not dispute that it got ONdigital's secret codes, which is not illegal, and that the material was passed on to Mr Adams.

Mr Adams has denied he ever had the codes.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/murdoch-tv-e...z1qQ5pb0sp
Australia says News Corp piracy claims are serious

By Gavin Lower

MELBOURNE (MarketWatch, 3-27-12) Media claims that News Corp. promoted the pirating of its pay TV rivals are serious and any allegations of criminality should be referred to the police for investigation, the Australian government said Wednesday.

The Australian Financial Review newspaper alleged in an investigative report that piracy cost News Corp.'s pay TV rivals millions of dollars a year.

"These are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the AFP (Australian Federal Police) for investigation," a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Dow Jones Newswires.

A spokesman for News Corp.'s Australian unit, News Ltd., declined to comment immediately on the report.

News Corp., owner of Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, owns the Daily Telegraph and the Australian newspapers among other publications and media properties in Australia.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/austral...2012-03-27

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here's the Murdoch Empire response.

They don't seem to be suing the Beeb yet.....

News Corp accuses BBC of 'gross misrepresentation' over pay-TV claims

Rupert Murdoch's right-hand man, Chase Carey, says Panorama 'presented manipulated and mischaracterised emails'
Jason Deans

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 March 2012 09.24 BST


Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has accused the BBC of "gross misrepresentation" over the Panorama documentary alleging that its former subsidiary NDS was involved in helping computer hackers to undermine ITV Digital.

Chase Carey, News Corp's chief operating officer and Murdoch's right-hand man, said in a statement issued early on Thursday that Monday's Panorama had "presented manipulated and mischaracterised emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations".

"The BBC's Panorama programme was a gross misrepresentation of NDS's role as a high quality and leading provider of technology and services to the pay-TV industry, as are many of the other press accounts that have piled on if not exaggerated the BBC's inaccurate claims," Carey said.

"Panorama presented manipulated and mischaracterised emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations. News Corporation is proud to have worked with NDS and to have supported them in their aggressive fight against piracy and copyright infringement."

News Corp also on Thursday published a letter to Panorama from NDS executive chairman Abe Peled, accusing the BBC current affairs programme of having "seriously misconstrued legitimate activities" the company undertakes in running its encryption business.

NDS, based in Staines near Heathrow, plays a key role in Murdoch's global media empire. It provides the encryption technology that enables BSkyB and News Corp's other pay-TV businesses around the world to issue subscribers with set-top boxes and conditional access cards that allow them to watch channels they have paid for.

Earlier in March it was announced that NDS would be sold to Cisco for $5bn by its joint owners, News Corp and private equity firm Permira. NDS also works with other companies and now supplies encryption software to a third of the world's pay-TV operators.

Monday's Panorama broadcast allegations linking NDS to the pirating of conditional access cards for ONdigital, giving viewers free access to channels operated by the pay-TV rival to BSkyB, which was owned by ITV companies Carlton and Granada. ONdigital, rebranded ITV Digital, collapsed in 2002.

The Panorama claims were based on allegedly incriminating emails and interviews with two people apparently involved, a German hacker who said he cracked the ONdigital codes and the operator of a piracy website who said he distributed the codes to other pirates to manufacture counterfeit conditional access cards.

Both alleged that they were recruited on NDS's behalf by Ray Adams, then its head of UK security.

Peled, in his letter to Panorama representative Alistair Jackson, accused the programme of a "flagrant disregard for the BBC's broadcasting code, misleading viewers and inciting widespread misreporting".

He said the programme had featured "manipulated emails", mischaracterised and taken them out of context.

"You have used footage to falsely demonstrate your allegations that we sent certain emails externally to facilitate piracy when in fact the email was sent internally as part of our anti-piracy work," Peled said.

"This has helped paint a picture for your viewers that is incorrect, misleading and deeply damaging to my company and our sister company News Corporation. We demand that you retract these allegations immediately."

Peled added that he understood that the "manipulated and mischaracterised emails" may have been provided by a third party, "but this does not excuse your ethical and journalistic obligation to present us with your intended allegations prior to broadcast".

Separately, Australian officials said on Thursday they are not investigating claims by the Australian Financial Review that News Corp promoted piracy in order to cripple its competitors.

"If there's any evidence of that, then the Australian Financial Review should put it to the federal police, but we have not made a reference, the police have not received a reference," the Australian communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said.

A federal police spokeswoman confirmed the agency had not launched an inquiry into the claims.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Dick Fedorcio, Scotland Yard's top Press Officer, resigns directly after gross misconduct charges were launched by the Met.

Those charges can now not be pursued as Fedorcio is no longer a Scotland Yard employee.

Maybe Wallis and Fedorcio can get a job in Bahrain with Yates of the Yard....

Met's PR chief Dick Fedorcio resigns as force opens disciplinary action

Inquiry finds Dick Fedorcio should face gross misconduct charge for awarding contract to former NoW executive

Sandra Laville and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 March 2012 12.06 BST



Scotland Yard's head of communications, Dick Fedorcio, has resigned immediately after the force opened disciplinary proceedings against him.

An inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) into Fedorcio's award of a contract to Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World, found he had a case to answer for gross misconduct.

Fedorcio's resignation has curtailed any disciplinary action, but the IPCC will publish the inquiry's findings sometime next week.

Deborah Glass, the IPCC's deputy chair said: "In light of Mr Fedorcio's resignation today, [disciplinary] proceedings cannot now take place and I propose to publish our investigation report detailing our findings, in the next few days."

Civilian police staff are able to resign once disciplinary proceedings are launched and as a result avoid those proceedings. In doing so Fedorcio will not now face any sanction as a result of the inquiry into his alleged gross misconduct. The rules are different for police officers.

Fedorcio was under scrutiny for his decision to hire Wallis to provide PR advice for the Metropolitan police.Wallis's company Chamy Media was paid £24,000 by the Met between October 2009 and September 2010.

Fedorcio had been on extended leave since August pending the investigation into his relationship with the former News of the World executive, who was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking last July but has not been charged.

Glass said: "Our investigation found that Mr Fedorcio has a case to answer in relation to his procurement of the contract for Chamy Media. Last week the Metropolitan Police Service proposed to initiate proceedings for gross misconduct and I agreed with that proposal."

Scotland Yard said it could not comment on whether Fedorico would be entitled to his full pension rights as a result of his resignation.

Earlier this month the Leveson inquiry into press standards heard that Fedorcio invited people from leading PR firms Bell Pottinger and Hanover to submit rival bids for the contract that was awarded to Wallis.

Chairman Lord Justice Leveson suggested Fedorcio chose these companies because he knew they would be more expensive than the former News of the World executive, adding: "The point is, this is set up to get a result."

Fedorcio denied this, but confirmed that he initially wanted to award the contract to Wallis without any competition. Wallis offered his services as a PR consultant to the Met over lunch with Fedorcio in August 2009, the inquiry heard.

The Scotland Yard communications chief, whose deputy was on long-term sick leave at the time, discussed the possibility of hiring the ex-tabloid executive with then-assistant commissioner John Yates.

Yates said Wallis gave him "categorical assurances" there was nothing about the News of the World phone-hacking case that could emerge later to embarrass the Metropolitan police if he was given the job.

Fedorcio said he only became aware that Wallis was of interest to Scotland Yard over phone-hacking on the day of his arrest on 14 July last year.

Yates told the Leveson inquiry he was "good friends" with Wallis, and attended football matches and dined out with him.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Yet again, the case for the prosecution is proven.

And the appointed "judiciary" lay out the damning evidence and shamefullly bottle the judgement.

Yates of the Yard and Spinner Fedorcio have resigned, at very timely stages in the process, and thus escape any prospect of disciplinary action.

The integrity of the Metropolitan Police is "compromised" but noone faces justice.

Met police 'showed poor judgment' in hiring former News of the World deputy

Former Scotland Yard press chief Dick Fedorcio criticised in wake of phone-hacking revelations for giving Neil Wallis contract

Vikram Dodd

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 April 2012 12.24 BST


An independent report has criticised the Metropolitan police for "blurring" professional boundaries and showing "poor judgment" in hiring the former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis as a PR consultant.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report criticised Scotland Yard's former head of press Dick Fedorcio personally for awarding a £1,000-a-day contract for advising the force to Wallis's company, Chamy Media.

The contract was given despite Wallis having served as deputy to Andy Coulson at a time when phone hacking is suspected to have been widespread at the now defunct tabloid.

Fedorcio, who was head of the Metropolitan police's powerful directorate of public affairs, was instrumental in awarding the contract, the IPCC found, a decision which it said damaged the force's integrity.

The IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass said the decision to hire Wallis showed the Met was "oblivious to the perception of conflict". She said: "It is clear to me that professional boundaries became blurred, imprudent decisions taken and poor judgment shown by senior police personnel."

The IPCC found the Met's integrity had been "compromised" by the awarding of the contract and held Fedorcio responsible for hiring Wallis. It said: "It can be concluded that Mr Fedorcio was personally responsible for the decision to employ Mr Wallis. He failed to ensure that the requirements of the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] contract regulations and MPS standard operating procedure in respect of vetting were complied with and this has compromised the integrity of the MPS in the awarding of the contract."

Wallis was arrested by phone-hacking investigators last July. The news that he had been paid to advise the upper echelons of the Met set off a chain of events that saw the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, and assistant commissioner John Yates resign, and Fedorcio was placed under investigation by the IPCC over the awarding of the contract.

Last month Fedorcio resigned after the force opened disciplinary proceedings against him.

Wallis worked for the Met from October 2009 to September 2010 for two days a month, and was paid £24,000.

The IPCC found Fedorcio had a disciplinary case to answer.

Its report said Fedorcio had:

"Effectively employed" Wallis prior to a written contract being prepared or agreed.

Compromised "the integrity and fairness of the competitive process" leading to the awarding of the contract as Wallis had already worked for the Met.

Failed to seek "the approval of the Police Authority as outlined in the MPS policy" for hiring Wallis.

Failed to follow Met policy in ensuring a vetting check was completed on Wallis.

Fedorcio had said he thought Yates, a personal friend of Wallis, had checked with the former tabloid executive to see if anything in his past could embarrass the Met.

The report says of Fedorcio's failure to adequately vet Wallis: "Mr Fedorcio's explanation of this was that he did not believe that a vetting process was required in the circumstances of this contract. This was not correct. The then head of vetting confirmed that in the circumstances Mr Wallis should have been vetted."

Wallis worked at the Met at a time when the force was dismissing Guardian reports that hacking had been widespread at the News of the World and known to senior executives.

The IPCC cleared Yates of impropriety over the hiring of Wallis's daughter for a civilian role in the Met, but said he had shown poor judgment.

Glass said of Fedorcio: "In neither case did we find evidence of corruption, but in both cases we found that policies were breached, and in the case of the former director of public affairs, Dick Fedorcio, that there was a case to answer in relation to misconduct.

"Despite the growing phone-hacking scandal, which must have exercised the MPS at a senior level and which was beginning to damage the reputation of the Metropolitan police in late 2009, senior people appear to have been oblivious to the perception of conflict."

Fedorcio was one of the most powerful figures in British policing, serving as a top adviser to every commissioner since Paul Condon.

In a statement the Met said: "Dick Fedorcio, the MPS director of public affairs for the past 14 years, took the decision to leave on 31 March 2012. During that period he made a very significant contribution to the work of the MPS. In common with other employees, MPS police staff have the right to resign, upon giving notice in accordance with their contracts of employment, whilst the subject of disciplinary investigation."