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February 28, 2012

Murdoch Reporters Traded Cash for Info From Police, Officials 
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The British police officer leading an investigation into a bribery
scandal at Rupert Murdoch's newspapers in Britain has revealed
journalists at Murdoch's newspaper, The Sun, often paid large sums of
cash to corrupt police officers and public officials in exchange for
private information. The disclosure could give ammunition to the FBI and
other U.S. government agencies to prosecute Murdoch's firm, News Corp,
for violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Murdoch owns
several major media assets in the United States, including Fox News, the
Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. Sue Akers, Deputy Assistant
Commissioner of the British Metropolitan Police Service, outlined her
findings on Monday.

Sue Akers: "There also appears to have been a culture at The Sun of
illegal payments and systems have been created to facilitate those
payments, whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the
money. The emails indicate that payments to sources were openly referred
to within The Sun, and, in which case, the source is not named, but the
category of public official is identified rather than the name."

Akers said employees at Murdoch's newspaper paid out large bribes to
police officers and public officials.

Sue Akers: "I mean not ones that involve just the odd drink or meal, to
police officers or other public officials: these are cases in which
arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular and frequent
and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public
officials by journalists. Some of the initial emails reveal, upon
analysis, that multiple payments have been made to individuals amounting
to thousands of pounds. In one case, over a period of several years,
this amounts to in excess of 80,000 pounds."



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