The new cases reportedly were discovered through tips provided by an inside informant.
A lawyer for victims of phone hacking by Britain's News of the World says a new conspiracy uncovered by British investigators has hundreds of potential victims from the now defunct tabloid that was part of media baron Rupert Murdoch's global news empire.Hugh Tomlinson made the announcement Monday at Britain's High Court during legal arguments related to the lawsuits against Murdoch's News International, which published the tabloid at the center of the scandal.
The company has already paid millions of pounds in settlements and could face another round of lawsuits if the reports of new hacking cases are true.
Tomlinson did not elaborate, but The Guardian newspaper reports that the new allegations come from a phone-hacking suspect who turned informer.
The hacking cases, which have greatly damaged the reputation of the British tabloid press, initially involved phones of celebrities and members of the royal family. But they erupted into a major scandal after allegations surfaced in 2011 that the phone of a murdered 13-year-old school girl, Milly Dowler, had been hacked as well as phones from deceased British soldiers.
The Guardian, quoting unidentified sources, reports that the 600 potential cases surfaced after police received the phone records of an insider who will become a witness for the prosecution.
It says the potential new litigants fall in into three groups: new victims; other victims who have have already sued over past cases but are not barred from going to court again; and a third group who signed agreements potentially barring them from suing again.
Information from the same informant led to arrests last week of the editor of the Sunday Mirror, Tina Weaver, and four former colleagues arrested on suspicion of conspiring to hack phones, The Guardian reports.
So far, eight former staff members of the News of the World, which Murdoch closed after the phone-hacking scandal broke, face allegations of conspiring to hack phones. These include former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.
Brooks resigned in 2011 as a top executive with News International, which oversees the British arm of Murdoch's media company.
Coulson, also a former editor of the tabloid, resigned in 2011 as communications director for Prime Minister David Cameron in the wake of the hacking allegations.
Both have denied allegations of wrongdoing in the phone-hacking cases.
The revelations of new victims came only hours after British politicians announced they had struck a last-minute deal over press regulation, unveiling a new code meant to curb the worst abuses of the country's scandal-tarred media.
The code follows days of heated debate over how to implement the recommendations of Lord Justice Brian Leveson, tasked with cleaning up a newspaper industry plunged into crisis by revelations of widespread phone hacking.
Victims' groups have lobbied for an independent watchdog whose powers are enshrined in law but media groups have said that threatens press freedom.
The deal struck early Monday appears to be a complicated compromise.
Contributing: Associated Press
No comments:
Post a Comment