News of the World bosses 'ordered mass email deletion in bid to cover up phone hacking'

Hundreds of thousands of 'unhelpful' emails deleted and computers destroyed, court documents reveal



Revelation is appalling timing for News International as it prepares to launch The Sun on Sunday this weekend

IPCC launches investigation over allegations a senior Scotland Yard officer 'inappropriately' disclosed information to a News International executive



News of the World bosses ordered emails that could be used against them in court to be deleted to cover up phone hacking, leaked documents have revealed.



Hundreds of thousands of emails were deleted on 'nine separate occasions' while computers were destroyed and a senior executive ordered a staff member to remove all paper records connected to them.



The revelation couldn't come at a worse time for News International as the company gears up to launch The Sun on Sunday this weekend.



Phone-hacking victim Charlotte Church, pictured at the Leveson Inquiry, is thought to have accepted a deal worth £500,000. It was revealed today that News of the World bosses ordered the deletion of hundreds of thousands of 'unhelpful' emails

The newspaper's 'Email Deletion Policy' to 'eliminate' material that could 'be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which a News International company is a defendant' was revealed in a series of court documents released to the Daily Telegraph by a High Court judge.

The family of Milly Dowler, 13, are said to have received a £3million payout over phone-hacking of the schoolgirl's mobile

Lawyers compiled the court documents on behalf of phone hacking victims using information provided by News International’s internal Management and Standards Committee, set up to look into journalism practices across the company's titles.



The documents would have been used in any high court trials over the phone-hacking scandal.

But News Group Newspapers (NGN), publisher of News of the World, has set aside a £20million fund to settle phone hacking cases out of court.

In total, more than 50 cases have been settled, with the majority of victims receiving between £25,000 and £30,000.

Among the bigger payments, the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler are said to have received £3million, while it emerged yesterday that Charlotte Church is thought to have accepted a deal worth up to £500,000 - believed to be £180,000 in damages with the rest covering her legal costs.



The leaked court documents also revealed admissions that News Group Newspapers would have made if there had been any High Court trials - as well as individual staff statements about phone hacking.

The newspaper's royal reporter Clive Goodman, who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007, claimed during an internal employment hearing that 'all of the stories' he wrote in his final two years at the News of the World 'were based on phone hacking'.

The court papers also revealed that at least six News of the World journalists hacked phones themselves. The documents also allege that newspaper bosses created the 'Email Deletion Policy' in November 2009 despite being aware of pending civil claims over phone hacking from 2008 and having a legal obligation to 'preserve all relevant evidence'.

IPCC LAUNCHES ITS OWN INVESTIGATION

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched an investigation into allegations a senior Scotland Yard officer inappropriately passed information to a News International executive. Investigators are examining contact between the officer and the executive during the original 2006 investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World. The IPCC will look into whether the officer committed a criminal offence but added there is currently no evidence to suggest that any inappropriate payment was made. IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass said: 'In this case, the allegation of an inappropriate disclosure of information from an MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) officer to an executive at News International raises important issues of public confidence in the MPS. I believe it is right that we independently investigate this to determine if there was any wrongdoing. 'The Leveson Inquiry is, among other things, inquiring ‘into the way in which any relevant police force investigated allegations or evidence of unlawful conduct by persons within or connected with News International’. I will therefore be liaising with them on the extent to which the IPCC should explore the consequences of any inappropriate contact.' Scotland Yard said it had decided not to suspend the officer, based within the force’s specialist operations branch, which is responsible for counter-terrorism.



An unnamed senior executive at News Group Newspapers also repeatedly demanded progress reports on the strategy, asking on July 29, 2010: ‘How come we still haven’t done the email deletion policy discussed and approved six months ago?’

Further specific requests for emails to be deleted allegedly came after the company received a letter dated 6 September 6, 2010, from actress Sienna Miller’s legal team that demanded that all relevant documents and emails be preserved by Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers.

Three days later, on September 9, an employee in the technology department wrote: ‘If the deletion need [sic] to wait until tomorrow, then that is fine. There is a senior NI management requirement to delete this data as quickly as possible but it need to be done with commercial boundaries.’

The Daily Telegraph reported that the court document also contained a statement from News International’s chief information officer, Paul Cheesbrough, claiming that all emails on News International’s archive system up to September 2007 were deleted.

News Corporation's own MSC provided police with data that has led to two waves of arrests of nine senior reporters and editors.

Members of MSC searched through millions of emails, payments records and other documents for evidence that public officials may have been paid for information by journalists at News International, which also publishes The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

The Sun's associate editor Trevor Kavanagh, 69, took to the pages of his beleaguered newspaper to slap down the MSC team, which is seen as responsible for information that led to the arrest of nine top staff and three sources including an army officer, police officers and a civil servant.

He wrote in the full-page article that The Sun was 'not a swamp that needed draining' after a source close to the MSC had defended handing over the emails that led to the arrests by stating: 'we are draining the swamp'.

On February 11, police arrested deputy editor Geoff Webster, picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, deputy news editor John Sturgis and chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker.

Head of news Chris Pharo, crime editor Mike Sullivan, executive editor Fergus Shanahan, an former managing editor Graham Dudman were previously arrested on January 28.

An MSC spokesman insisted Press freedom was not being compromised by its activities.

End of an era: The last edition of the News of the World in July 2011 after the newspaper was closed over the phone hacking scandal

But despite settling more than 50 cases out of court, NGN - which is owned by News International - still faces the prospect of further claims and risk of High Court trials.



Miss Church was to become the first phone-hacking victim to take her case to trial next week but she will now attend the High Court on Monday to hear an apology read by legal representatives of NGN.



Five other cases from an original batch of 60 launched before last October will also be dealt with at the hearing - including those of footballer Ryan Giggs, former royal butler Paul Burrell and Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames.



But Mr Justice Vos, who is overseeing the proceedings, was told a second wave of 56 claims is in the pipeline.



More than 800 victims of phone hacking have been identified by Scotland Yard since it started investigating the phone-hacking scandal last year.

But the latest revelations and the possibility of further court cases down the line will be unwelcome news as the company tries to focus its attention on launching the Sun on Sunday.



Rupert Murdoch announced yesterday that his new Sunday red-top would be aggressively priced at 50p, half the cost of rival tabloids, and also announced a 17 per cent cut for the Saturday Sun to 50p.

A tabloid price war is expected to break out this weekend as the Sunday Mirror, People and the Daily Star Sunday slash their prices by at least 50 per cent to takethe cut-price Sunday edition of the Sun.

Since the announcement, Richard Desmond said the price of the Saturday edition of the Daily Star will be cut from £1.10 to 50p and the Daily Star Sunday from £1 to 50p while Trinity Mirror is also understood to be preparing a selective cut of 50 per cent for the Sunday Mirror and People in some regions.

News Group Newspapers declined to comment today.

