Murdoch underling charged with bribing police

This video from Britain is called Rebekah Brooks and others charged with perverting course of justice (15 May 2012).

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Rebekah Brooks charged with perverting the course of justice

Former News International chief executive, her husband and four others charged in phone-hacking inquiry

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent

Tuesday 15 May 2012 16.02 BST

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, would be charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation.

And Scotland Yard later confirmed she had been charged along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, and four others.

Brooks is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, a racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives.

Brooks and her husband were informed of the charging decision – the first since the start of the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation last January – when they answered their bail at a police station in London on Tuesday morning.

They are among six individuals from News International, along with the company’s head of security, Mark Hanna, to be charged over allegations that they removed material, documents and computers to hide them from officers investigating phone hacking. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life, although the average term served in prison is 10 months.

In a statement, Brooks and her husband – who are both close to David Cameron – condemned the decision made by senior lawyers and overseen by Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions. …

Brooks is accused in one charge of conspiring with her PA, Cheryl Carter, to “remove seven boxes of material from the archives of News International”.

In a separate charge she is accused of conspiring with her husband, Hanna, her chauffeur and a security consultant to conceal “documents and computers” from the investigating detectives. All the offences are alleged to have taken place in July last year.

Alison Levitt QC, Starmer’s principal legal adviser, said the decision to charge six of the seven individuals arrested over the allegations came after prosecutors applied the two-stage test required of them when making charging decisions.

“I have concluded that in relation to all suspects except the seventh there is sufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction,” she said.

“I then considered the second stage of the test and I have concluded that a prosecution is required in the public interest in relation to each of the other six.”

Levitt said the televised statement had been made in “the interests of transparency and accountability to explain the decisions reached in respect of allegations that Rebekah Brooks conspired with her husband, Charles Brooks, and others to pervert the course of justice”.

She said detectives handed prosecutors a file of evidence on 27 March this year in relation to seven suspects: Brooks, her husband, Hanna, Carter, Paul Edwards who was Brooks’s chauffeur employed by News International, and Daryl Jorsling, who provided security for Brooks, supplied by News International.

See also here.

Tories’ panic mounts as Cameron’s chum Rebekah Brooks charged: here.

Of course, no objection at all to charging Ms Brooks, a rich and powerful criminal suspect and friend of David Cameron. However, compared to her boss Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks is just an organ grinder’s monkey. When will the police (sections of the police not yet bribed by the Murdoch empire, one should hope) do something about the organ grinder Murdoch himself?

Leveson inquiry: Damning evidence of political corruption of Labour and Conservative parties: here.

There have been over 800 complaints over police corruption in the last three years, a government-commissioned report has revealed: here.

Pressure mounted on Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday after a lobbyist and a former special adviser laid out the gory details of his office’s dealings with the Murdoch empire over its bid for broadcaster BSkyB: here.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt told his special adviser Adam Smith to quit after emails revealing the close relationship between his department and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation were released, the Leveson inquiry heard today: here.

USA: Charles Koch + Roger Ailes = Ohio University? Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundation: “Why would the esteemed Ohio University host a talk by the likes of Roger Ailes? Maybe we should ask one of the talk’s patrons, Charles Koch. Ailes, of Fox News fame, is giving his talk today. The guy who invited him says the point was to get ‘perhaps the most influential newsman in America’ to spark a discussion about ‘free speech and the media,’ particularly given OU’s ‘first-rate school of journalism.’ But Roger Ailes isn’t a newsman and doesn’t do journalism. He does political advocacy that’s (very) thinly disguised as journalism. As Eric Boehlert of Media Matters says, ‘places of higher learning shouldn’t help perpetuate the Fox myth while turning a blind eye to the lasting damage Ailes’s enterprise is doing to journalism and to our national discourse'”: here.