News Corp papers emerge
NEWS CORPORATION agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to an early phone-hacking victim because it recognised that evidence from the case was “fatal” to its claims of innocence, new evidence released yesterday claimed.
Briefing notes and emails between News Corp lawyers and handed over to the parliamentary committee investigating the scandal make it clear that several senior executives were aware of the problem in 2008.
News Corp’s senior counsel Michael Silverleaf QC told his clients that there was “a culture of illegal information access” at the media group involving “at least three” of its reporters.
The evidence suggested that lawyers for News Corp agreed to a huge pay-off to the victim, soccer players’ union boss Gordon Taylor, who had got hold of a evidence that implicated that other News of the World journalists were involved as well as Glen Mulcaire.