Tom Watson, a Labour lawmaker who has taken a leading role in the hacking inquiries, said he was asking the police to investigate whether James Murdoch had misled a parliamentary committee in his testimony on Tuesday.
Those and other developments put renewed pressure on the Murdochs and seemed to frustrate efforts by the company and its global parent, News Corporation, to contain the damage and put the scandal behind it.
Separately, another Labour lawmaker said he had written to nonexecutive directors of News Corporation urging that James and Rupert Murdoch be suspended from their roles in running the company.
Also, the authorities in Scotland opened an investigation into phone hacking and police corruption that could put new focus on Andy Coulson, a former editor of The News of the World, a tabloid that the company shuttered. He testified at a trial there that he knew nothing about phone hacking.
Mr. Cameron continued Friday to distance himself from the Murdochs and their newspapers, whose support helped usher him into power just over a year ago, as the scandal continued to raise questions about the close ties between his government and News International executives.
“Clearly, James Murdoch has got questions to answer in Parliament, and I’m sure he will do that,” Mr. Cameron said during a visit to an auto plant in the British Midlands. “And clearly News International has got some big issues to deal with and a mess to clear up. That has to be done by the management of that company. In the end, the management of the company must be an issue for the shareholders of that company, but the government wants to see this sorted out.”
In a week of fast-moving developments, James Murdoch testified that he had not been aware in 2008 of evidence that phone hacking at The News of the World went beyond a single “rogue reporter,” as the company then maintained. A year earlier, a reporter covering the royal family for the paper, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator on contract to the paper were convicted of hacking into the voice mail accounts of members of the royal household.
But on Thursday, two executives — Colin Myler, a former editor of The News of the World, and Tom Crone, the company’s former legal manager — said that James Murdoch’s testimony was “mistaken” and that they had in fact shown him evidence of wider phone hacking. Mr. Murdoch immediately denied the assertion, a stance he repeated Friday in an open letter to the chairman of the parliamentary panel.
“Allegations have been made as to the veracity of my testimony to your committee on Tuesday,” he said. “As you know, I was questioned thoroughly and I answered truthfully. I stand by my testimony.”
Mr. Watson, the Labour lawmaker, said the police should look into Mr. Crone’s and Mr. Myler’s assertions. “If their version of events is accurate,” he told the BBC, “it doesn’t just mean that Parliament has been misled, it means the police have another investigation on their hands.”
The British authority that regulates lawyers said Friday that it would formally investigate the role played by lawyers in the hacking scandal. Without naming specific firms, the Solicitors Regulation Authority said it would specifically investigate concerns raised by Mr. Watson.
He asked the authority to review Harbottle Lewis, a law firm that counts members of the royal family among its clients. Rupert Murdoch has accused the firm of making a “major mistake” in its review of internal News of the World e-mails, some of which, it has since emerged, contain evidence of wrongdoing.
The firm was hired by The News of the World in 2007 to defend it in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the royalty reporter, Mr. Goodman, who claimed he should not have been fired because other staff members had done similar things.
Harbottle Lewis was asked to look through about 2,500 e-mails to and from Mr. Goodman, according to News International officials. In a carefully worded May 29, 2007, letter to the company, Lawrence Abramson of the law firm said that the review of e-mails found no evidence that executives knew about hacking. Several company executives have since said that the e-mail did contain signs of other unethical practices, notably police payoffs.
Lord Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions who was hired by News International to help it re-examine the e-mail, has said that the signs of criminality were “blindingly obvious” after a review of just “three to five minutes.”
Harbottle Lewis, which has been given a release from client confidentiality requirements to answer some questions put by the police and Parliament, did not return a call requesting comment.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23murdoch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.