Rebekah Brooks in line for £3.5m payout as News International slaps gagging orders on chief executives (apart from that inquiry on Tuesday)



Senior News International executives to receive £8.5m severance payout



Final NotW editor, Colin Myler, is believed to be in line for £2m pay-off

Two senior lawyers - Jon Chapman and Tom Crone - will both get around £1.5m



David Cameron met with Murdoch and executives 26 times in a year

Murdoch family row as biographer claims Elizabeth's 'f***** the company' remark was also directed at brother James

Murdoch's right-hand man Les Hinton quits after 52 years

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks face MPs on Tuesday

FBI probe launched in the US into the alleged hacking of the phones of the 9/11 victims



Payout: It is believed Rebekah Brooks has been given a severance package in the region of £3.5million after resigning

Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks is in line for a seven-figure severance package after resigning.

Senior colleagues have estimated her pay-off will be in the region of be around £3.5m.

The size of the figure will leave a nasty taste in the mouths of the journalists who blame her for losing heir jobs following the collapse of the News of the World.



The final editor of the paper, Colin Myler, is also set to to be in line for a bumper pay-off - estimated at £2m after the paper produced its last-ever edition on Sunday.

Two of the company's senior lawyers - Jon Chapman and Tom Crone - will both get around £1.5million, the Independent reported today.



Les Hinton, 67, chief executive of Dow Jones, the U.S. arm of Murdoch's monopoly and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, became the most senior figure yet to resign last night.

And he too expected to receive a hefty sum.

The financial settlements will include gagging orders to stop executives discussing company matters outside of any public inquiries or criminal proceedings.

Lower down the ranks around 200 News of the World workers are waiting to find out if they will be made redundant.



Many will be hoping to get work on a mooted replacement Sunday red-top produced by News International.

All eyes will be on Mrs Brooks as she appears before MPs this Tuesday at the House of Commons, alongside Rupert Murdoch and his son James.

Mrs Brooks, 43 who was regarded by Mr Murdoch as ‘another daughter’ joined News of the World as a secretary in 1989, eventually becoming its editor in 2000 - the youngest ever at the time.

In January 2003 she became The Sun's first female editor and in 2009 it was announced that she would become chief executive of News International.



It was during a March 2003 inquiry into privacy issues, that Mrs Brooks revealed that her newspaper had bribed police officers for information.

Right-hand man: Les Hinton (left), chief executive of Dow Jones & Co in New York, has followed Rebekah Brooks and resigned in the wake of the phone hacking scandal after 52 years under Rupert Murdoch (right

Full-scale apology: The text of Rupert Murdoch's advertisement which appears as a full page advert in today's national newspapers

Mr Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, 42 reportedly slammed Mrs Brooks last week saying that she had 'f***** the company' and is understood to be 'furious' that her father's media empire has been thrown into the spotlight over the last fortnight.



Meanwhile James Murdoch, 38 is likely to be grilled by MPs over why he sanctioned out-of-court settlements to victims of phone hacking in an apparent attempt to buy their silence.

It has also been revealed that Prime Minister David Cameron met with Rupert Murdoch and his News International executives 26 times in a single year, roughly every fortnight.



And there were claims of a Murdoch family rift after Rupert's biographer Michael Wolff said Elizabeth's recent angry comments were not just directed at Rebekah Brooks.

He tweeted: ' Reports Elisabeth Murdoch said Rebekah Brooks "f***** the company" are incomplete. She said: "James and Rebekah f***** the company".'

Former Treasury minister Lord Myners also said shareholders should end the ‘hereditary principle’ that allows the Murdochs to control the broadcaster BSkyB and oust James Murdoch as chairman.

Tuesday's panel will be made up of ten members of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sports Committee led by Tory chairman John Whittingdale.

Solicitor to Milly Dowler's family said: 'The family is pleased that they are going to attend but I think they will be sceptical about anything they will say.'



He speculated that 'we’re going to see the three monkeys, ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’. They’re going to say undoubtedly ‘heard no phone hacking, saw no phone hacking and nobody was speaking about phone hacking’.”

It will be the first time the trio have been questioned over the hacking scandal and some are worried what direction the hearing will take.

Price to pay: The final editor of the paper, Colin Myler, (right) is believed to be in line for a £2million pay-off while two of the company's senior lawyers - Jon Chapman and Tom Crone (left) - both get around £1.5million

Tom Crone, a senior legal executive at News International departed a week after James Murdoch implied that he and the former editor of News of the World, Colin Myler, may have misled him about the reasons for making a £700,000 payment to football chief Gordon Taylor in 2008 after a private investigator working for the News of the World hacked into his phone.

This was one the first pieces of evidence that confirmed the hacking scandal had spread beyond the royal reporter, Clive Goodman.

Mr Crone who had acted on behalf of News International for over 20 years has now threatened that he will speak out against the Murdoch family if he is 'screwed over'.

He told the Evening Standard that he might speak out 'if they completely screw me over' adding 'They [The Murdochs] won't say anything but they [the committee] will be asking questions, which will be almost as good.'

Mr Crone was at the center of the phone hacking scandal and he has defended the company numerous times in the past. A friend of Crone’s says that he leaves with a 'clear conscience'.

He is expected to get around £1.5million in payments according to the Independent and is now believed to be on three months' gardening leave.

The news of Les Hinton's resignation comes as another blow to Murdoch. Mr Hinton who was appointed CEO of Dow Jones in December 2007, after its acquisition by News Corp was regarded as 'Murdoch's representative on earth'.

Mr Hinton wrote in an email to colleagues that it was a 'deeply, deeply sad day for me... I have never been with better, more dedicated people, or had more fun in a job.'



Prior to his appointment at the financial publishing firm he was running News International from 1997 to 2005, during the time of the phone hacking scandal.

Before exiting the firm he had worked under Murdoch for more than fifty years as a journalist and executive in Australia, the U.S., and the UK.



In response to Mr Hinton's decision 80-year-old Mr Murdoch said: 'News Corporation is not Rupert Murdoch. It is the collective creativity and effort of many thousands of people around the world, and few individuals have given more to this company than Les Hinton.'

The news of two of his most senior executives resigning arrived as he issued a face-to-face apology to the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler over the phone hacking scandal.

He said he was ‘appalled’ to learn that his media empire had apparently tapped into Milly’s voicemails, suggesting it had failed to live up to the standards set by legendary war reporter and newspaper proprietor Sir Keith Murdoch.

Ahead of his court appearance, Mr Murdoch has adopted a dramatically different tone to recent weeks issuing an unprecedented public apology published in several British newspapers, including the Daily Mail.

The now-defunct News of the World, he says, was in the business of holding others to account but had ‘failed when it came to itself’. ‘We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred,’ he adds.

‘We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out. I realise that simply apologising is not enough.’

Mr Murdoch promises to resolve the crisis and ‘make amends for the damage’ – a hint that he may be considering large donations to charity.

It emerged yesterday that the FBI have began an investigation into the allegations that News International employees tried to hack the phones of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks at the conclusion of the current police investigation by Scotland Yard.

