Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Murdoch
Bryant's statements come in the wake of a secret tape made by a News Corp employee, being released to the public this week, featuring Murdoch in a private meeting, slipping up in revealing he's known of and is in agreement with criminal activity taking place at News Corp, such as bribing police in the phone hacking scandal. It confirmed what the Judiciary Report has stated for years, Murdoch is the man behind the criminal activity at News Corp and his employees were following his orders. The man believes he is above the law.
Rupert Murdoch
Former News Corp executive Dan Cooper stated publicly that Fox News has a secret department in its New York building devoted to phone hacking, wiretapping and other invasive, illegal activities for scoops and stories to run on the network and its website, "Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. I knew it also housed a counter intelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie. It was staffed by 15 researchers and had a guard at the door. No one working there would engage in conversation” (Fox News Has A Secret Phone Hacking Department In The Building Says Former Employee). This is illegal.
STORY SOURCE
US should press corrupt practices charges against
Murdoch, says MP
Secret recording 'another reason' for FBI to act,
says MP, amid anger at News Corp boss's cash for police tips claim
Chris Bryant, who has been compensated for phone hacking by the defunct News of the World, said the latest revelations were "another reason" for the FBI to take action under the foreign corrupt practices act, which makes it an offence for American companies to pay public officials on foreign soil.
The MP for Rhondda said he had spoken to the Met police, and claimed the force had been in touch with the FBI. But he added that he believed the UK authorities were reluctant to consider bringing any corporate corruption charges in the UK because the force was "waiting for Operation Elveden [the investigation into unlawful payments made to public officials] to finish".
Meanwhile, Labour colleague Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, has written to a leading US politician, Senator John D Rockefeller, asking him to ensure the US authorities' investigations into News Corporation "are not inhibited in going to the very top".
The latest scandal over alleged payments to police erupted after Sun journalists secretly taped a 45-minute meeting in March between Murdoch and at least 24 staff who had been arrested in relation to Scotland Yard's Elveden investigation...
Murdoch says: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops. That's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it." Bryant believes this is enough for the US authorities to act: "American law is much tougher than UK law: you don't have to prove that a director knew it. The mere fact that a company engaged in paying public officials is enough to bring a body corporate charge … the charge can be brought because the directors did not have a governance system in place to stop it."
He said he had been told by the Met that they had been in talks with the FBI. Mark Lewis, the lawyer representing the Dowler family and other phone-hacking victims, said Murdoch's private remarks would be held up by lawyers in the US where a number of civil claims are being prepared over phone hacking under various US acts, including the stored communications act and the wiretap act.
He said: "No doubt the FBI will be very interested in comments that suggest a senior director of a company was fully aware of payments to foreign officials. As far as the US claims are concerned, this raises further evidence of knowledge at the highest levels of News Corp of unlawful activities."...
