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Phone-hacking scandal moves to US
By - , Posted on January 20, 2012
- Rupert Murdoch's phone hacking nightmare just doesn't end.
According to a report Friday in the British newspaper The Telegraph, a News Corp. division in the UK faces an investigation by the FBI into whether the now-defunct Murdoch tabloid News of the World hacked into a phone on U.S. soil.
The report comes one day after the division, News International, agreed to pay actor Jude Law $200,000 plus legal fees as part of settling claims with 37 victims of voicemail and e-mail hacking. A 2003 News of the World story that used details obtained by phone hacking referred to Mr. Law being at an airport, believed to be John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
A spokesman in the FBI's New York office said that the law enforcement agency was “aware of the allegations” that phone hacking had taken place on U.S. soil, but would have no comment. “It's our standard practice not to comment on investigations, whether we have them or don't have them,” he said.
News International has insisted that the settlements were not an admission of wrongdoing. But according to a statement read in court on Thursday by lawyers for the victims, compensation had been “assessed on the basis that senior employees and directors” of the Murdoch papers' parent company “knew about the wrongdoing and sought to conceal it.”
News International said that assessment was agreed to only for the purposes of reaching a settlement.
A News Corp. spokesman in New York said that the company would have no comment on the FBI probe.
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