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Gordon Brown Files New Complaint Over Alleged Obstruction of Justice by Rupert Murdoch’s Newspaper Group
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lodged a fresh complaint with British law enforcement, alleging that Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) obstructed justice. This follows Brown’s discussions with officers involved in the original phone-hacking inquiry. He claims there’s evidence of deliberate email deletion within the organization.
Allegations of Email Deletion and Misleading Investigators
In an article published in The Guardian, Brown asserts that a detective involved in the initial investigation confided in him, claiming “significant evidence” existed suggesting that News Group Newspapers (NGN) erased millions of emails intending to pervert the course of justice.
According to Brown, the former officers stated that awareness of the deleted emails’ context would have prompted them to push for further investigative measures.
Brown quoted one former officer as saying: “If we had known this in 2011, we would have investigated fully and taken a different course of action including considering arrests.”
Criminal Complaint Filed
“Today I am making a criminal complaint to the Met (MPS) and CPS alleging that I am, along with many others, a victim of the obstruction of the course of justice by News Group,” he writes. “This is not an allegation made lightly. It is informed by recently available evidence, and by the statements of senior officers involved in the original investigations into unlawful news gathering, who have now stated to me that they were misled.”
NGN Denies the Allegations
NGN vehemently denies all accusations related to destroying evidence. The company highlights that the Crown Prosecution Service determined in 2015 that there was no evidence to suggest company email deletions were carried out to obstruct justice.
In January, NGN issued an apology to Prince Harry for phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World, its Sunday tabloid, and for “serious intrusion by the Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun.”
The apology formed part of an out-of-court settlement concluding litigation brought against NGN by the prince and Tom Watson, a former Labour deputy leader.
Brown stated that the settlement had “not closed an era of investigation and litigation into media corruption. It has opened it up”.
Details Emerging from High Court Documents
Brown’s complaint to the Metropolitan Police is based on information from former detectives included in documents submitted to the High Court in London.
Their statements supported the long-standing phone-hacking litigation pursued against NGN by Harry and Watson.
The legal arguments from both sides were not initially made public, and the claims were not tested in court due to the settlement.
NGN made no admissions regarding the alleged illegal destruction of evidence, which the company strongly denies. It asserted that it would have successfully contested the allegation if the case had proceeded to trial.
Accusations Against Will Lewis
In his Guardian article, Brown accuses Will Lewis, currently chief executive of the Washington Post but formerly a senior NGN executive, of attempting to incriminate him and Watson.
He alleges that a false accusation against them was used to justify the deletion of emails to officers involved in Operation Weeting, the Met investigation launched in January 2011 to examine the phone-hacking allegations.
His accusation concerns documents disclosed in High Court civil actions last year, including a minute taken by the Metropolitan Police of a meeting detectives held with Lewis on July 8, 2011.
During the meeting, Lewis stated the company had been informed of a plot involving Brown and Watson to obtain the emails of Rebekah Brooks, the then chief executive of News International, through a third party. At the time, Lewis was the company’s general manager.
Brown reports that one of the investigating officers has now said that NGN “falsely implicated Gordon Brown. If I had known this I would have made arrests for obstruction of justice.”
NGN apologized to Watson over the allegation of a plot as part of the settlement of his case, stating the company now understood “this information was false”.
However, the company has maintained that it believed the threat was genuine at the time and would have proven it in court. NGN planned to cite a 2011 email from Brooks, not previously made public, expressing concern about the internal security of the company’s IT systems.
Lewis has previously strongly denied wrongdoing. He did not comment when approached.
NGN’s Defense Against Cover-Up Allegations
In its legal defense, NGN firmly rejected allegations of a cover-up. A spokesperson stated the lack of contemporary evidence supporting the claimants’ case and emphasized NGN’s strong lineup of witnesses who could confirm its position. They described concerns raised by two former officers as a “selective and partial consideration of the contemporaneous documents”.
NGN’s legal argument claimed that the deletion of emails had “long been in the planning, for sound commercial, IT and practical reasons,” and that Harry and Watson’s claims relied on “wholly unreasonable inferences from an incomplete account of the facts, many of which are taken entirely out of context”.
An NGN spokesperson said that when Operation Weeting was initiated, the company handed incriminating material to police, while officers were immediately made aware of “the steps NGN had taken in relation to its historic email archive as well as the actions it had taken to preserve relevant evidence”.
They stated that NGN collaborated with specialist IT police officers for months to reconstruct its electronic archives.
“The allegations of email deletion had formed part of the prosecution case in the criminal trial in 2013/14,” they said. “The investigation into News International concluded in 2015, almost 10 years ago, with a lengthy statement by the CPS deciding that no further action was to be taken in the light of there being no evidence to support an allegation of wrongdoing.”
Brown Calls for Further Action
Brown insists that the police request a series of court documents submitted during years of litigation, including from former NGN employees and ex-police officers.
- He also calls for prosecutors to intervene.
- For parliamentary committees to reopen their inquiries into the deletion of emails.
- He also asks the attorney general to intervene.
NGN Responds to Brown’s Claims
A spokesperson for NGN stated: “NGN once again strenuously denies that there was any plan to delete emails in order to conceal evidence from a police investigation.”
They dismissed Brown as an “unreliable complainant driven by vendetta and revenge for perceived wrongs by NGN”. They affirmed that NGN figures working with police on company emails “acted throughout with the utmost integrity and at all times followed the protocol agreed with the MPS in order to provide access to and restore data”.
“Mr Brown’s concerns again provide an inaccurate summary of allegations dealt with in the civil proceedings, which have already been extensively investigated and litigated,” an NGN spokesperson said. “It is not uncommon for retired police officers to hold views about their failure to achieve a conviction or matters that have not gone their way in court … There are officers from the 2011 to 2015 investigations who, in possession of all the facts, would not agree.”
Metropolitan Police Statement
A Met spokesperson released this statement: “While we acknowledge that information emerging from civil proceedings is of interest to the public and the press who may be seeing it for the first time, in the vast majority of cases it is material that has already been considered as part of the numerous investigations and reviews that have previously been carried out.
“We are aware that parties in this recent case indicated an intention to pass material to us but we are yet to receive any such correspondence. In the event that we do, we will consider it carefully and proportionally, recognizing the need to explore genuine lines of inquiry but acknowledging the significant resources already committed to past investigations.”