Prosecutors end Murdoch’s News Corp phone hacking probe
Insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction have led prosecutors to end Britain’s four-year investigations into the scandal
PUBLISHED : Friday, 11 December, 2015, 9:04pm
UPDATED : Friday, 11 December, 2015, 9:04pm
Agence France-Presse in London
News Group Newspapers’ Rupert Murdoch. Photo: AP
Prosecutors announced on Friday they would take no further action in Britain's mammoth phone-hacking probe, ending a four-year investigation that rocked the political and media establishment to the core.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it would take no further action against News Group Newspapers (NGN), global media baron Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid publisher.
England's state prosecutors also said there would be no further action against 10 journalists from the rival Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) stable – among them former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.
The phone hacking scandal, which first emerged in 2006 and resurfaced explosively in 2011, engulfed top newspaper executives, police chiefs and politicians.
It swiftly sank the expose-led News of the World weekly tabloid, which was Britain's biggest-selling newspaper.
The probes into voicemail interception and other alleged media crimes amounted to the biggest police investigation in British history.
Several journalists from Murdoch's publications have been individually convicted of voicemail interception offences.
But since July, the CPS was also considering whether to prosecute NGN as a whole for corporate liability.
It was further deciding whether to bring phone hacking charges against 10 MGN journalists.
But Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, announced the CPS was dropping both probes.
“We have decided there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction and therefore no further action will be taken in any of these cases,” she said.
“There has been considerable public concern about phone hacking and invasion of privacy. Over the past three years, we have brought 12 prosecutions and secured nine convictions for these serious offences.
“These decisions bring the CPS's involvement in current investigations into phone hacking to a close.”
The CPS said they had been considering potential corporate charges of phone hacking and perverting the course of justice against NGN.
However, “the law on corporate liability in the United Kingdom makes it difficult to prove that a company is criminally liable if it benefits from the criminal activity of an employee,” the CPS said.
“There is no evidence to suggest that any member of the board of NGN had knowledge of phone hacking when it was taking place.”
On perverting the course of justice, it said there was nothing NGN employees could have done between 2006 and 2011 which would have altered or affected the phone hacking prosecutions.
Furthermore, “the fact that NGN decided to settle rather than resist civil proceedings cannot be considered to be actions which could pervert the course of justice”.
Finally, there was “no evidence” that NGN's mass email deletion policy “was undertaken in order to pervert the course of justice”.
Meanwhile the CPS considered files on 10 MGN journalists relating to phone hacking allegations.
Phonecall data showed a “regular pattern” of two calls being placed to the same number at the same time – so-called double-tapping to ensure a second call went to voicemail – and a high volume of calls to voicemail numbers.
“However, it is not possible to prove the fact that the 'double taps' and calls to voicemail platform numbers are definitely instances of phone hacking,” the CPS said.
MGN journalists regularly used each other's phones, so it was “not possible to determine which individuals were responsible for making specific calls”.
It “could not be said with certainty” that the call data “showed instances of phone hacking by any specific individual”.
Morgan, who was interviewed twice by police but not arrested, said he was among the 10 told that no further action would be taken against them.
“As I've said since the investigation began four years ago, I've never hacked a phone and nor have I ever told anybody to hack a phone,” he said on Twitter.
