DETECTIVES BELIEVE a "network" of corrupted public officials in Britain has been supplying "salacious gossip" for years to the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunnewspaper for cash, the head of a police inquiry said.
Giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry into British press standards, Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers said a “culture of illegal payments” existed at the tabloid.
“Payments by journalists to public officials have been identified in the following categories; police, military, health, government, prison and others,” she said.
One official had been paid £80,000 over a number of years, while a reporter on the tabloid received £150,000 from it to pay off sources, she added.
“It suggests payments were being made to public officials in all areas of public life,” Ms Akers, who is now leading the 60-strong Operation Elveden investigation into the links between press and public officials, told Mr Justice Brian Leveson.
Her declaration comes a day after Mr Murdoch turned the Suninto a seven-day week newspaper to fill the gap left left by the News of the World's closure last year.
So far 22 people have been arrested, including 10 Sunjournalists, though none has been charged. Faced with rumblings from the paper's staff, Mr Murdoch last week announced they would be allowed back to work, pending the police decision on charges. "There appears to have been a culture at the Sunof illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money," Ms Akers told the inquiry.
Emails gathered by News Corporation’s own internal inquiry – known as the Management Standards Committee – indicates, she said, that the practice was “openly referred to” at the tabloid, even though the identities of the sources were known only to a few.
A final decision on whether the payments could be justified on public interest grounds will be for a judge to decide, she said, but she said the “vast majority” unearthed so far are “salacious gossip”.
The role of the corporation’s committee is important to Operation Elveden, she said, “as current legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible, for police to access material of the type it is seeking without that assistance”.
The committee provided information “in an unredacted form” to enable public officials to be identified, once the police have displayed “an evidential base to request information”.
However, the standards committee is giving only edited versions of emails to detectives inquiring into the system used to make payments to ensure that legal sources are not identified, she said.
The deputy assistant commissioner rejected complaints from many in the British media that it had been wrong to arrest Sunjournalists in 'no warning' dawn-raids.
“[They] have been conducted as we would in any other case, where the primary aim is to secure best evidence and prevent suspects from conferring, or disposing of evidence.”
The "aim has never been to threaten the existence of the Sun", she said, adding that searches of the newspaper's offices were made on Saturdays when it would be empty.
Reporters have recognised that the payments are illegal, she said, since there are references in the emails that staff were “risking their pension, or job”, or to the need for “care” or “cash payments”.
“There is also an indication of tradecraft, ie hiding cash payments to sources by making them to a friend, or a relative of a source,” she went on, adding that this suggested that senior management approved them.
Singer Charlotte Church and her parents yesterday settled their phone-hacking claim against Mr Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World, in an agreement worth £600,000.
FINANCIAL TIMESSTRIKE THREAT:
The Financial Timesis facing a walkout by journalists after they voted three-to-one in favour of strike action, according to the National Union of Journalists. The ballot at the London- based paper was held in response to a management offer to raise pay by 2 per cent but retain a third of the money set aside for this year's increase to use as merit pay for staff retention at the managing editor's discretion.
NUJ members described the offer as “deeply divisive”. The FT Group announced a 27 per cent rise in operating profit in 2011 and a 6 per cent rise in revenue.