Agencies/London
The chief foreign correspondent for Rupert Murdoch’s top-selling British tabloid The Sun has been charged for allegedly paying public officials for information, prosecutors said yesterday.
Journalist Nick Parker faces three counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office relating to alleged payments to a prison officer and a police officer between 2007 and 2009.
The prison officer, Lee Brockhouse, also faces two related charges of misconduct and conspiracy to commit misconduct, said Gregor McGill, a senior lawyer with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
The allegations state that between April 2007 and October 2009, The Sun paid £1,750 to Brockhouse for information about the movement of prisoners, prison procedures and methods used by prisoners to smuggle items into jail.
Brockhouse, who worked at Swaleside prison in Kent, east of London, is also accused of providing similar information to the rival People newspaper for £900.
Parker also faces two charges of conspiring with an unnamed police officer to commit misconduct in public office in March-April 2009 and December 2009.
Gregor McGill, a senior lawyer with the CPS, said in a statement: “Following a careful review of the evidence, we have concluded that Nick Parker, a journalist at the Sun newspaper, should be charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. We have also concluded that Lee Brockhouse, a prison officer at HMP Swaleside, should be charged with one count of misconduct in a public office and one count of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.”
Both men will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on July 18. The CPS said it had also decided not to charge another journalist arrested over related allegations.
An internal message to staff at News International, Murdoch’s British newspaper division, confirmed proceedings had been dropped against John Sturgis, the deputy news editor of The Sun.
News International chief executive Mike Darcey said in the message that he was disappointed at the charges brought against Parker and said he would be given legal support.
The police investigation into alleged bribery of public officials, dubbed Operation Elveden, was launched following the phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid. Several journalists from The Sun have been charged.
Murdoch shut the NOTW in 2011 after it emerged it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voicemails of hundreds of high-profile figures, including a missing teenager who was later found murdered.
Meanwhile, News Corp suffered a setback in its battle to contain the fallout from the British press phone hacking scandal, with the revelation of the first known US law suit.
British national Eunice Huthart, US actress Angelina Jolie’s Hollywood stunt double, filed a suit on June 13 in Los Angeles accusing the company’s now defunct News of the World of intercepting her voice mail messages.
Huthart’s case is thought to be the first to cross the Atlantic. It comes at a delicate time for the US-based company, which is undergoing a split to divide its publishing and newspaper arm from its more profitable film and television brands.
According to her suit, Huthart believes her phone was hacked “as a means to get information about Jolie.”
The complaint, filed in a federal US court seeks “maximum statutory actual damages” and punitive damages against News Corporation, its News International and News Group Newspapers subsidiaries and other unidentified individuals.
It said Huthart, who is the godmother of Jolie’s first biological child, lost numerous phone messages in 2004 and 2005, including from Jolie, while working on films including Mr & Mrs Smith.
Huthart’s mobile phone number, account number and personal code appeared in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, who was imprisoned in Britain for six months in 2007 for intercepting phone messages at the request of News of the World.
