Guardian: Andy Coulson to Be Arrested in Hacking Scandal

The Guardian is reporting that former News of the World editor and David Cameron flack Andy Coulson received notice today to show up at a London police station to be arrested tomorrow.

Andy Coulson has been told by police that he will be arrested on Friday morning over suspicions that he knew about, or had direct involvement in, the hacking of mobile phones during his editorship of the News of the World.

The Guardian understands that a second arrest is also to be made in the next few days of a former senior journalist at the paper.

Leaks from News International forced police to speed up their plans to arrest the two key suspects in the explosive phone-hacking scandal.

The Guardian knows the identity of the second suspect but is witholding the name in order to avoid prejudicing the ongoing police investigation.

[snip]

Evidence leading to the two imminent arrests has come from a cache of emails recently uncovered during NI’s internal investigation into phone hacking.

[snip]

The Guardian understands that NI had promised the police not to reveal the existence of evidence identifying Coulson and the other journalist, but that detectives began to fear the information would be leaked, after reports appeared suggesting that Coulson approved payments to police officers.

So not only has News International known that Coulson was in trouble, but someone has leaked tidbits of it.

I’m not sure closing News of the World is going to help News Corp–or Scotland Yard–avoid this much longer.

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52 replies
  1. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Closing the NoW will help Murdoch, and David Cameron is staunchly in his corner. Fortunately, the queue-observing British public is less comatose than is true here and British courts are far less obnoxiously subservient to overweening claims of executive power and corporate immunity.

    A big issue now will be whether the Met’s earlier investigation into NoW will be an internal or external one.

    • emptywheel says:

      You think closing NoW will help that much? I was wondering if they learned about the Coulson arrest news and then pulled the plug, but keeping Brooks seems to limit the benefit to Murdoch in closing NoW.

      • phred says:

        According to Davies, Rupert and Brooks are quite close, so he is undoubtedly trying to protect her. Rupert’s son is also likely in the cross-hairs for paying people off to go away, but Davies thinks things have now gone beyond what the Murdoch family can control. It will be interesting to see how things progress…

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        I think Brooks is dug in like an Alabama tick. She was once considered for the COO slot for his entire empire. I do think Murdoch would drop her quickly if she became too hot, but he will pull in a lot of favors first. Undoubtedly, she didn’t rise so near the top of Murdoch’s empire without learning a few defensive tricks of the trade herself. It will be interesting to see if any of them surface or if they are all practiced behind the scenes.

  2. phred says:

    The Guardian has posted a video of Nick Davies talking about this story and its importance. In a nutshell, he feels the significance of it is the power elite put themselves above the law. (Gee, where have we heard that before ; )

    It’s well worth 10 minutes of one’s time to watch it.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      That video should be all over the globe.

      What this says about Rebecca Brooks (either vile or incompetent, or both), what this says about Cameron and his party, what this says about Murdock — and what it says about the cops — is reprehensible.

      Family of dead teenager doesn’t know she’s dead because NoW employees are deleting her voice mails?! Hard to get your head around.

      I figure Murdock wants the NoW as a legal, corporate entity shut down as soon as possible for reasons of legal positioning and liability.

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Thank you for this article.

    I do think that Murdoch’s strategically planned closing of NoW will ultimately make him money, as well as form part of a “bet the company” defense of Murdoch’s global empire, including his continuing acquisition of BSkyB, which Cameron seems determined to drive through.

    It gets the NoW name off the newsstand. It’s likely to delay the investigation into its hacking and blackmail at the highest level by allowing NoW executives to claim it’s harder to get data or witnesses. It may also delay and reduce pay-outs to victims.

    It makes it appear as if Murdoch and his corporations are contrite, which is about as likely as Sydney harbor drying up. It may also appease his non-family member board members and lenders, who are more likely to be concerned about their own culpability as well as bad publicity. Executives likely to be concerned about the NoW’s illlegal conduct are unlikely to be associated with Murdoch.

    It may give cover to a not-so-determined government’s reluctance to investigatge too much and to avoid inquiring into whether sister Murdoch companies engaged in illegal acts similar to the NoW.

    The saving grace is that not everyone in Parliament and the government, let alone the courts or public, is in thrall to Rupert, despite his probably having more blackmail data in his files than J. Edgar Hoover. This is going to be a dog’s breakfast and be on the menu for quite some time. An interesting aspect will be to see whether and how the MSM covers it.

  4. Fractal says:

    This is such a huge story. The emergency debate in the House of Commons yesterday was historic, very similar to one of our Watergate hearings — absent the guilty witnesses. I am so happy to see this covered on FDL, thanks Marcy!

    I think yesterday’s (July 6) emergency debate may still be available in streaming video from ParliamentLive, although it may force you to sit through the entire Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ) first. When I watched it yesterday, it was a “live” stream so the controls didn’t work. They may work today.

    Today’s (July 7) session of Parliament has probably ended; it appeared to start out nearly empty.

    Did I miss the news that News of the World (NoW) will actually be shut down?

    • phred says:

      Yep. The last edition comes out on Sunday after 168 years of publication. Heckuva job Rupert!

      • emptywheel says:

        If I’m remembering all the way back to my academic years, NoW was one of the more interesting serializing newspapers in the UK, closer to what the continent did.

        So I’ve read it–just on microfilm.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      NoW to close after this Sunday.

      The Independent and the Guardian would both be good sources for following this mythic story. Its implications for Murdoch’s empire, for his influence over the British government, for media’s relationship with government, for corporate influence over government generally are likely to be profound.

      • Fractal says:

        yes. The debate in the Commons yesterday was stunning in its implications. At least one MP said NoW hacked private communications of MPs and used those breaches of privacy directly to interfere with or obstruct the personal free speech rights of MPs guaranteed by the Bill of Rights of 1688.

  5. Fractal says:

    D’OH! Now I see the UK Guardian has been live blogging the shutdown of NoW since about noon our time.

  6. Riffin' Man says:

    The nuts and bolts of this operation must have been significant. I eagerly await details on how the boiler room operation must have worked. The volume of targets makes it seem like a labor intensive project. Also, is UK cell phone technology unique to the whole world? It must be – as I’m sure that’s the only system the Murdoch team could crack.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Precisely. It is now obvious even to casual readers that NoW’s behavior was patently illegal, that that behavior was sanctioned and encouraged from the top, and that those top, British-based managers have considerable influence over his global empire.

      As you mockingly point out, cell phone and e-mail technology, with minor variations, are global phenomena. A serious setback in Murdoch’s prize UK market, especially if its repercussions prevent his acquisition of the BSkyB stock he does not already own, will have global implications. As legal, economic and media industry theater, this will be better than the London Olympics in 2012. That’s one reason it will be important to see whether, how, and how narrowly US media covers these events.

      The revenue flows at stake are well into the billions and extend far beyond the revenue from NoW. Much of NoW’s revenue will be recovered through back-office consolidations and other media. Other revenue flows are indirect. They derive from Murdoch’s overall media presence, his ability to help or hinder the powerful, to force through acquisitions, such as BSkyB.

      • Riffin' Man says:

        Our overlords are a bunch of panty sniffers. If nothing is stopping them from doing it, like dogs they will do it because they can. (apologize for mixing 2 vulgar metaphors).

    • Fractal says:

      I would be willing to bet the same assholes who hacked UK phones also hacked US phones. Also, they didn’t just hack cell phones, they tapped regular phone lines, they hacked email, they intercepted regular mail, they hacked bank accounts, they penetrated all databases.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      IIRC, the video phred recommends mentions that the Murdock execs flew to India to insist that emails be deleted from the server, which was located in India.

      Whoever controlled the server said, ‘no dice’.
      Good on them.

      ———
      On an unrelated note, not mentioned that I’ve seen at UK, but I think of interest to eWheelies, in Nicholas Shaxson’s fabulous book “Treasure Islands”, he specifically mentions how Murdock uses tax havens as a competitive advantage.

      Tax havens are key to how Murdock was able to ‘outcompete’ his competitors. His competitors paid (at least their share of) taxes, whereas Murdock used tax havens — one gets the impression that tax havens must be core to his ‘business strategy’. How else do you created and sell that tabloid stuff and ‘outcompete’ your competitors?

      If they are paying taxes, but you are sending that money offshore and then using accounting tricks and buying loopholes in the tax codes to further concentrate your wealth, then you build up a lot of (economic, social, political) power.

  7. rosalind says:

    I read buzz earlier that Murdoch had been planning to shutter NoW and expand The Sun to seven days a week for a while now. The new Sunday Sun edition was announced today. Someone noted that a domain name like “SunonSunday” was registered two days ago.

  8. Fractal says:

    It is just so obvious that Murdoch is cutting his losses but will never admit the core truth which is that Murdoch Inc. is a criminal enterprise.

    Remember, the frame that “he bet the company” is just wrong, IMHO. He bet the life of one newspaper, sure, but one newspaper is not “the company.” He killed one newspaper to save the rest of News International, to save News Corp.

    He moved too late. Now that we know NoW paid $150,000 in bribes to Scotland Yard, we know that a foreign subsidiary of News Corp. paid criminal bribes to protect its business position and gain a competitive business advantage in a foreign country (UK). Its subsidiary paid bribes (corrupt payments) to increase its circulation and profits. Its subsidiary probably had at least some business relationships with the UK government. All of those facts establish a sufficient predicate for a United States federal government investigation of News Corp. for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). If News Corp. is found guilty under the FCPA, it can suffer massive economic penalties in the U.S. There are parallel criminal or competition laws in Europe enforced by the European Commission, which can act against the global parent News Corp.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      He will defend the claims involving NoW as if he were defending a bet the company lawsuit. It’s not just an ego thing, though he prizes his UK outlets, especially his mass market ones, more than Lord Beaverbrook and his peers did theirs. It is that they are the core of a global empire and global business model, as is their use in influencing government officials and government decisions that help him make money.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      As Craig Murray noted yesterday, Murdoch’s reach has to date prevented any serious inquiry into those at the Met who received those bribes or those who paid them. It also seems likely that the amounts revealed to date are tiny in comparison to total bribes and total illegal conduct that might be discovered if an investigation into News International and News Corporation were to be pursued as vigorously as if Murdoch were wielding a weapon on a No. 9 bus.

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          Briefly and superficially, the answer is probably not. That assumes that NoW is wholly owned by News Int’l, and that it is wholly owned by News Corp.

          The FCPA prohibits bribing of foreign officials acting in their official capacity (performing more than perfunctory, administrative functions), for the purpose of obtaining or maintaining business. Its accounting transparency rules apply to SEC issuers. The anti-bribery provisions apply to natural and legal US persons, to foreign corporate issuers of US securities, and to foreign persons actions while in the US. The FCPA’s offshore reach is limited to controlled subsidiaries and then indirectly.

          News Corp would be covered by both provisions. It would be obligated to impose similar standards on its its controlled, first-tier subsidiaries. NoW would appear to be a second or lower-tier subsidiary. Arguably, the bribery that allegedly took place here did not involve obtaining or maintaining business, though one might argue otherwise, and was not in amounts that would make incomplete or inaccurate News International’s books or News Corporation’s SEC disclosures.

          Further disclosures could change that picture, which is one of many reasons why Murdoch’s tribe will defend all these investigations as if the company’s future depended on it.

          • chetnolian says:

            May a UK lawyer join in? Are you sure? If James, as Chairman of News Intl’ can peremptorally close NoW down, is that not strong evidence News Intl’ controls it? And if police were paid to provide stories (which is strongly alleged)isn’t that payment to obtain business?

            • rugger9 says:

              By all means, please do, especially with respect to what Coulson’s troubles mean to his intersection with Sheridan and what Glasgow’s prosecutor will do about it as it unfolds there. Since Scottish particularism and/or nationalism is very definitely on the rise, wouldn’t the perjured prosecution of a Scottish MP resonate profoundly with the electorate there? As I understand it, they have their own parliament again.

              Ignoring Scottish sensibilities brought down Charles I, in pieces, and as I’ve noted before, I’m not so sure Clegg and his Liberal Democrats are so willing to defend Cameron on what is already a sordid and deeply felt betrayal of the public (Hacking kidnap & murder victims and dead soldiers? Really? Changing the records?) which Cameron already tried to spike.

              If Labour can come up with a coalition with the LibDems, Cameron is through. The useful question is just how tied in is Rupert with Labour?

          • Fractal says:

            This is very helpful, thank you for putting flesh on the bare bones I dredged up. NoW is not a separate corporation but just a title, I suspect. News International owns and runs all the UK titles, including five major newspapers (NoW, Times, Sunday Times and two others). And, as chet said @34, Murdoch’s son is chair of News International (NI). The CEO of NI is the now infamous Rebekah Wade Brooks. Incidentally, Rebekah’s predecessor as CEO of NI, Les Hinton, was plucked out of the UK by Murdoch and placed in charge of the Wall Street Journal. Media Matters (h/t UK Guardian) has lovely juicy bits about what a fraud Hinton was when he supposedly “investigated” phone hacking at NoW.

    • rugger9 says:

      In addition to the Earl’s comments, one must also assume that the DOJ would actually go after NewsCorp in the USA. Given the outlets Rupert owns here, in terms of market share, and his proclivity for attacking those who question him, combined with the already well demonstrated caving to the RW Wurlitzer that Obama does for just about anything, FCPA enforcement probability is zero.

      So, while the government could try to spike the investigations in the UK and elsewhere, Question Time is still televised, and FWIW, I’m sure Rupert hacked throughout his empire, including in Australia and NZ. Cameron won’t win the war for Rupert as long as light can be shown on the problem.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        UK police and regulators might just thoroughly investigate a few of Mr. Murdoch’s less salubrious activities, despite the moans and groans of the great and good in Whitehall. Something even might come from it so long as it does not also bring down a government. Mr. Obama’s DoJ seems as likely to investigate News Corporation as it is to open murder investigations into the more than 100 prisoners who have died in US custody in our GWOT.

        • Fractal says:

          I certainly admit DOJ is unlikely to be a hero. I raised FCPA as an example of the type of exposure that could exist for the parent holding company. If there is such potential exposure, the parent has an obligation to investigate itself and make certain disclosures, under securities law & regs and under FCPA protocols that are enforced either by corporate counsel or by the SEC, I’m not sure which.

          Also, aren’t there private rights of action under FCPA that could be exploited by competitors of News Corp (Murdoch Inc.)? Or am I thinking of civil RICO, which can now be used against Murdoch Inc. because it is a criminal enterprise?

    • liberaldem says:

      Let justice flow like a mighty stream… and carry Rupert and all of his scrabrous lot away

  9. fatster says:

    Footnote to a story of interest not too long ago.

    DOJ Lawyer [Robert E. Coughlin II] Disbarred in Connection to Abramoff Scandal

    LINK.

  10. Fractal says:

    This is gonna be so amazing to watch the coalition govt unravel over Murdoch corruption. Marcy’s hed basically means the Prime Minister’s just-resigned communications director is being arrested as part of an investigation of his criminal deeds committed before the current PM appointed him as his press secretary in the run-up to the 2010 elections. Coulson will probably be charged with bribery of Scotland Yard during his years as editor of NoW. Promptly after leaving NoW, Coulson was hired by Cameron. Did Coulson continue his criminal deeds while working for Cameron? Did NoW continue bribing Scotland Yard after Coulson starting working for Cameron? Did NoW commit other criminal deeds under other editors after Coulson joined the leadership of the Conservative Party, which may have helped the Conservatives take control of the government?

    Inquiring minds want to know!

    • chetnolian says:

      It’s even better than that. There’s one the London pundits have not really noticed.

      After a libel case brought by a maverick Scottish MP called Tommy Sheridan, NoW persuaded the Scots police to charge Sheridan with perjury. Coulson said in court that there had not been widespread phone hacking by the NoW. Which we now know was not true and pretty well know Coulson then knew was not true. Sheridan was convicted and went to jail this January based partly on Coulson’s evidence.

      So look for Coulson to be charged in Scotland with perjury. Sheridan’s lawyer and, according to the Glasgow based “Herald”, Glasgow’s Prosecutors,are on the case already.

      • Fractal says:

        Not to make my metaphors scream too much, but since I called Nick Davies the “Sy Hersh of the UK,” perhaps Andy Coulson is the “Lt. Calley of the NoW massacre.” (Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for his scoop about the Mylai Massacre carried out by U.S. army troops under the command of Lieutenant Calley in Vietnam.)

        I still say this could bring down Cameron’s coalition government. Not because he is quibbling with his deputy PM Nick Clegg, head of the Lib Dems, about whether to have one of the public inquiries run by a real judge, but because Coulson is fundamentally a career criminal willing to perjure himself to put others in jail in order to cover up the criminal enterprise at the heart of Murdoch Inc. And Cameron hired and relied heavily on career criminal Andy Coulson (and Murdoch Inc.) to rebuild his personal power, take over the Conservative Party, then take over the government. Motherfuckers.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      Did NoW commit other criminal deeds under other editors after Coulson joined the leadership of the Conservative Party, which may have helped the Conservatives take control of the government?

      I’m not excusing Gordon Brown, and although I somewhat follow UK news, I’m no expert. However, it’s my sense that you could take this to the bank.

      Friends are in UK at present, and the news I get is that this has even overshadowed the new release of Harry Potter’s final movie ;-)

  11. harpie says:

    The Guardian’s Nick Davies [thanks, phred @3]

    [9:19] To me, it isn’t a story about journalists behaving badly. It’s a story about the power elite. It’s about the most powerful news organization in the world. It’s about the most powerful police force in the country. It’s about the most powerful political party in the country. And for good measure, it’s about the Press Complaints Commission, and about how they all spontaneously colluded together to make everybody’s life easier; about the way in which they casually assumed that the law didn’t apply to them; and in which they equally casually assumed it’s perfectly alright to lie to the rest of us because we’re little people; we wouldn’t know that they were doing it. I think that’s really what makes me ultimately feel angry about it. It’s the arrogance of those assumptions in the power elite.

    • Fractal says:

      astounding work by Nick Davies — the UK’s Sy Hersh. What is the UK version of Pulitzer Prizes?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Take out the mockery and it sounds like the kind of assuring words Mr. Obama must hear from his COS every morning:

      “They’re only the little people, sir.”
      “I know. Who has Mr. Blankfein given me as my new Treasury Secretary?”

    • phred says:

      Thanks for taking the time to transcribe it harpie!

      Boy, does that just say it all or what? It isn’t just Murdoch and this particular scandal, it’s the whole global ball of wax, isn’t it? That’s what makes me so angry too, the presumption of these evil bastards that they can do anything at all and walk away unscathed, while the rest of us have to pick up the pieces of our lives after they’ve blown a big fucking hole in them, whether by stealing our savings, our retirement, our jobs, our homes, our privacy, our health, our honor and decency, or the lives of millions here and abroad literally blown to kingdom come for their profit.

      Over on another thread Jane mentioned outrage fatigue. I’m still too angry to be tired.

  12. Fractal says:

    earl this was really great, so I’m quoting you:

    The FCPA prohibits bribing of foreign officials acting in their official capacity (performing more than perfunctory, administrative functions), for the purpose of obtaining or maintaining business. Its accounting transparency rules apply to SEC issuers. The anti-bribery provisions apply to natural and legal US persons, to foreign corporate issuers of US securities, and to foreign persons actions while in the US. The FCPA’s offshore reach is limited to controlled subsidiaries and then indirectly.

    News Corp would be covered by both provisions. It would be obligated to impose similar standards on its its controlled, first-tier subsidiaries. NoW would appear to be a second or lower-tier subsidiary. Arguably, the bribery that allegedly took place here did not involve obtaining or maintaining business, though one might argue otherwise, and was not in amounts that would make incomplete or inaccurate News International’s books or News Corporation’s SEC disclosures.

    Key fact: Murdoch’s son James is a disclosure-level officer of both News International (NI), the UK sub, and News Corp., the US parent. Blogposts over at the Guardian liveblog cited a provision of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which would make James and NI criminally liable. So, I think UK law may provide a bridge over any problem of News of the World (NoW) being a “second or lower-tier” sub.

    The main reason I think FCPA does apply is precisely because criminal conduct, illegal hacking of cell phones, voicemail, email and other electronic databases and bribery were part of the business model of NoW. They used bribery of police to get data to build sensational stories which they expanded through other criminal data theft to build circulation to sell 2.6 million Sunday newspapers a week which generated 660,000 GBP (pounds sterling) a week in ad revenue (roughly a million bucks a week).

    I agree with you that the bribery amount (100,000 GBP or about $150,000) is probably not “material” in an accounting sense or in the law on SEC disclosures, so securities fraud is not a problem, at least not based on what we know so far. Every News Corp shareholder knows enough tonight to dump every share they own. The price of News Corp (NWSA) seems fairly stable this week although James Murdoch did transactions affecting his holdings in NWSA worth $640,000 on June 30.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      The main reason I think FCPA does apply is precisely because criminal conduct, illegal hacking of cell phones, voicemail, email and other electronic databases and bribery were part of the business model of NoW. They used bribery of police to get data to build sensational stories which they expanded through other criminal data theft to build circulation to sell 2.6 million Sunday newspapers a week which generated 660,000 GBP (pounds sterling) a week in ad revenue (roughly a million bucks a week).

      I think you’ve nailed it.

      And your earlier remarks about this quite possibly bringing down the coalition strike me as quite possible. (Although EW is back from holiday, so chances are diminished…)

      Puts Nick Clegg in a most intriguing position…

      This is going to get more interesting before it’s over. And there have to be a lot of politicians who must feel a wee tad liberated to see Murdock and his fortunes heading south.

      Yesterday, the Financial Times reported Murdock investors were starting to dump stock.

  13. harpie says:

    Plainly Not Fit and Proper Persons; Craig Murray; 6/8/11

    This is one of the things that Davies was talking about in the video phred linked to @3:

    Murray:

    News International have evidently decided to gamble on the idea that there is no end to the gullibility of the British mass public.

    The link he provides to original articles from the 1850’s is interesting.

    But let us stop and consider. A great part of British newspaper history, a paper that supported imprisoned Chartists, [who were being imprisoned in harsh conditions-harpie] has just been lost. With it have gone hundreds of jobs.

    • harpie says:

      From a comment at the LiveBlog about a BBC show that is “not available in [harpie’s] area”:

      I wanted to make sure I’d heard right, so I’ve just gone back to iPlayer. The most explosive stuff was 29 minutes in. Hugh Grant says

      The Culture and whatever-it-is Select Committee in… 2009, when they tried to bring Rebekah Brooks into see them and she refused… they kept asking and finally the message got through to the select committee “If you make me come, I will destroy your personal lives” and they backed off, terrified… this is a protection racket.

      He goes on to suggest that The Sun outed Chris Bryant as revenge for asking awkward questions about News International’s relationship with the Police.

      I’d really love someone to get on the phone and ask him how he knows all this, because it sounds like a potential smoking gun linking Brooks to the scandal.

  14. harpie says:

    Enter: An American lawyer:

    [LiveBlog @5.31pm]Rebekah Brooks is no longer in charge of the News International internal clean up committee – following a recommendation from James Murdoch and News Corp directors.

    An official message sent to staff following her 4pm meeting reveals Will Lewis, Simon Greenberg and Jeff Palker – Brooks’s lieutenants – will “report directly” to New York based Joel Klein on the clean-up.

    Klein was in the White House Counsel’s Office under Clinton, who then appointed him to the Department of Justice, in charge of the Anti Trust Division. [He was the lead prosecutor in US v Microsoft] Afterwards, he was Counsel to Bertelsmann, an international media group. In 2002 he was appointed New York City School’s Chancellor by Bloomberg until late 2010, when he became EVP for News Corporation.

    • harpie says:

      PS: I think it’s funny that he was head of the anti trust division, and and now works for one of the largest media monolpolies in the world.

  15. barne says:

    Just below the surface, blackmail wars must rage, even more than ever in the internet age.

    I’ve read that one famous blackmailer’s method was to pop into your office with a manila folder which held photographs or other damning evidence. Then he’d say, “My office has become aware that this information is out there, and we’ll be doing our best to make sure that nobody tries to misuse this against you.”

  16. harpie says:

    From the Live Blog:

    7.16pm: More than £1 billion has been wiped from BSkyB’s market value today, the Press Association has just reported.

    PA adds:

    Investors ditched shares in the company fearing that the recent revelations could lead Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to refer News Corporation’s bid to buy the 61% of shares it does not already own to the Competition Commission. […]

    It was a similar story at News Corp, which saw its share price drop nearly 4% today, causing its market value to fall by some 1.9 billion US dollars (£1.2 billion).

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