The Sun ‘created culture of illegal payments to police’
A SENIOR Scotland Yard detective accused The Sun newspaper yesterday of orchestrating a ‘culture of illegal payments’ to police and public servants.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said her officers were investigating a ‘network of corrupt officials’, some of whom allegedly received ‘retainers’ from the publication.
One journalist withdrew more than £150,000 in cash to pay sources over the past few years, and one public official alone received £80,000, she told the Leveson inquiry into Press standards.
‘The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials,’ she said. ‘Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists.
‘There appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments while hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money.’
DAC Akers is leading the Met’s Operation Elveden investigation into alleged illegal payments between journalists at The Sun and public officials.
Those suspected of receiving payments included not only police officers, but also those working in the military, health, government and prison service, she said.
‘It reveals a network of corrupted officials,’ she said. ‘When I say “network”, I
‘A network upon which to call’
don’t necessarily mean, and I don’t mean, that the officials are in contact with each other; more that the journalists had a network upon which to call at various strategic places across public life.
‘The emails indicate that payments to “sources” were openly referred to within The Sun. There is a recognition by the journalists that this behaviour is illegal, reference being made to staff “risking losing their pension or job”, to the need for “care” and to the need for “cash payments”.
‘There is also an indication of “tradecraft” – ie, hiding cash payments to “sources” by making them to a friend or relative of the source.’
She added: ‘The vast majority of the disclosures ... led to stories which I would describe as salacious gossip rather than anything that could be remotely regarded as in the public interest.’
DAC Akers made her allegations on the first day of the second phase of the Leveson inquiry, which aims t o examine t he relationship between the police and the Press.
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, said in a statement: ‘We have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future. That process is well under way.
‘ The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at The Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company.’
Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott, awarded £40,000 damages for phone-hacking, told the inquiry he was concerned police ‘withheld the truth’ over the extent of the illegal practice.
He was initially told by police there was no evidence he had been targeted and said he believed there was ‘a conspiracy of silence to hide the facts’.
Asked about the relationship between politicians and News International, he said: ‘I always thought it was wrong that politicians at the highest level were too close to Murdoch. There is always a price. It’s not exactly corruption and I’m not accusing them of that... I thought it gave a corrupting influence that they had too much influence and power.’
Former senior Met officer Brian Paddick told the inquiry that analysis of the computer of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, showed he appeared to have details of the new identities of people under the witness protection programme, such as the killers of James Bulger.
He said: ‘People are only put into the witness protection programme when the police believe their lives potentially are at risk or they are in serious danger. For this information to be in the hands of Mulcaire, and by implication potentially in the hands of the News of the World, it’s clearly worrying.’