Tom Crone, the News of the World's long-standing legal manager, is leaving News International – the latest in a string of company executives who were involved with the tabloid newspaper to leave the company.

The departure comes a week after Crone's boss, James Murdoch, implied that the lawyer 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.

The payment, revealed by the Guardian two years ago, was the first evidence that phone hacking had spread beyond the royal reporter, Clive Goodman. In his statement last week Murdoch said: "The company paid out-of-court settlements approved by me. I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret."

In subsequent evidence to a parliamentary select committee on the issue two years ago, Crone explained his involvement in the first internal investigation into the phone-hacking claims in 2007: "I tasked myself with finding out what exactly had happened; what was known, who knew what other documents there might be. At no stage during their investigation or our investigation did any evidence arise that the problem of accessing by our reporters, or complicity of accessing by our reporters, went beyond the Goodman/Mulcaire situation."

He subsequently told Sky news that he had "no involvement" whatsover in the 2007 NI report which found evidence of phone hacking more widespread than the activities of a single "rogue reporter" beyond the jailed Goodman. "Not only that but I didn't even know about the inquiry until 2009. I was not made aware of the emails until the last few weeks."

Denying any suggestion that he had seen the 2,500 emails uncovered by that report, he also said: "Finally the evidence I gave to the Commons committee in 2007 was truthful as far as I knew it."

Crone acted for the Sun and its Sunday sister during more than 20 years with News International. He won plaudits from both colleagues and rivals for his unerring journalistic instinct. Someone who knows him well said: "He is a unique lawyer in that he has great journalistic instincts. He is sort of 10% journalist and is incredibly streetwise."

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