Gordon Brown enters a criminal complaint against the media empire of Rupert Murdoch | Phone Hacking

The former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has filed a new complaint to the British police for allegations that Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire hinded justice after he had explained with officers involved in the original investigation into the telephone hacking.

Writing in The GuardianBrown said that one of the detectives had claimed that they believed that there was “considerable evidence” that News Group (NGN) had removed millions of e -mails to twist justice.

In the article, Brown states that the former officers told him that if they had been aware of the background of the e -mail removals, they would have insisted on further action.

Brown said that a former officer told him: “If we had known this in 2011, we would have fully investigated and took a different way of acting, including the consideration of arrests.”

“Today I put in a criminal complaint to the with and CPS who claim that, together with many others, I am a victim of the obstruction of the court by the news group,” he writes. “This is not an allegation made lightly. It has been informed By recently Available evidenceand through the Explanations of senior officers Involved in the original investigations into illegal news meeting, which have now declared me that they have been misled. ‘

NGN strongly denies all accusations of evidence of evidence. It said that the Crown Prosecution Service in 2015 concluded that there was no evidence that e -mail removals from the company were carried out to distort justice.

In January, Ngn apologized to Prince Harry For telephone hacking by journalists on his Sunday tabloid, the news of the world and the “serious infringement by the sun between 1996 and 2011 in his private life, including incidents of illegal activities carried out by private researchers who work for the sun”.

The apology was part of an extrajudicial settlement to put an end to a lawsuit against NGN by the prince and Tom WatsonA former vice leader of Labor.

Brown said that the settlement “had not closed an era of research and disputes for media corruption. It opened it”.

Brown’s complaint to the metropolitan police follows details about Claims from former detectives Included in a document submitted to the High Court in London.

Their statements were made to support the long-term telephone hacking rights case against NGN by Harry and Watson.

The skeleton legal arguments of both parties, Reported by The Guardianwere not made public at the time and the claims were not tested during the process because of the settlement.

No admission has been made about the claim of illegal destruction of evidence, which NGN strongly denies. The company said it would have been fought successfully against the claim if the case had gone to court.

In his piece for The Guardian, Brown accusations Lewis, now Chief Executive of the Washington Post, but then a senior NGN director, of Try to accuse him and Watson.

He claims that a false statement against them was used to justify the removal of e-mails to officers involved in Operation Vissing, the investigation launched in January 2011 to investigate the accusations of telephone hacking.

His accusation relates to documents announced last year in civil actions of the Supreme Court, including a minute taken by the with Police of a meeting detectives held at Lewis on 8 July 2011.

In the meeting, Lewis said that the company was told about a conspiracy in which Brown and Watson were involved to obtain the e -mails of Rebekah Brooks, the then Chief Executive of News International, through a third party. At the time, Lewis was the general manager of the company.

Brown states that one of the investigative officials has now told him that NGN “is wrongly involved Gordon Brown. If I had known this, I would have made arrests for obstruction of justice. ‘

Ngn apologized at Watson about the idea of ​​a plot as part of the regulation of his case, which stated that the company now understood “this information was incorrect”.

However, the company said that they believed at the time that the threat was real and would have proven this during the process. NGN was planning to quote an e -mail from 2011 from Brooks, not previously made public and expressed worries about the internal safety of the company’s IT systems.

NGN’s skeletal defense also noted that a series of security measures were then taken. The company also refers to a letter sent by Watson in January 2011 to the then with -assistant commissioner, John Yates, made public for the trial. In IT, Watson claimed to have been approached by former business staff with “Knowledge of the regulations for information technology of News International”, NGN claimed.

Lewis has previously denied strong misconduct. He did not comment when he was approached by the Guardian.

In his skeletal defense, NGN rejected strongly accusations of a cover-up. A spokesperson stated that there was a lack of simultaneous evidence to support the claimants’ case and that NGN had a strong series of witnesses who could confirm his own position. They said the Statements of two former officers with worries were a “selective and partial consideration of the simultaneous documents”.

According to the NGN skeletargumer, the removal of E -Mails “had long been planned for noise commercial, the and practical reasons”, and that the claims of Harry and Watson had drawn in this area from “completely unreasonable inferences from an incomplete report of the facts of which are taken entirely out of context”.

A spokesperson for NGN said that when the operation was initiated, the company handed over -taxing material to the police, while officers were immediately informed of “the steps that NGN had taken in connection with the historic E -mail archive and the actions it had taken to retain relevant evidence”.

They said that NGN worked with specialized IT police officers for months to reconstruct her electronic archives.

“The allegations of e -mail removal were part of the prosecution in the criminal trial in 2013/14,” they said. “In 2015, the research into News International, almost 10 years ago, concluded with a long -term statement from the CPS that decided that no further action should be taken in the light that there was no evidence to support a statement of misconduct.”

Brown writes that the police must apply for a series of judicial documents that were submitted during the years of a lawsuit, including from former NGN employees and former police officers.

He also calls for public prosecutors to board – and for parliamentary committees to reopen their questions to removing E -mails. He also asks the attorney general, Richard Hermer, to intervene.

A spokesperson for NGN said: “Ngn again strongly denies that there was a plan to remove e -mails to hide evidence from a police investigation.”

They said Brown was a “unreliable complainant driven by Vendetta and revenge for observed errors by NGN”. They said that NGN figures work with the police on business e -mails’ dealt with the greatest integrity and the protocol followed with the [Metropolitan police] To give access to and restore data ”.

“The concerns of Mr. Brown again offer an inaccurate summary of accusations that are dealt with in the civil proceedings, which have already been extensively investigated and tackled,” said a spokesperson for NGN. “It is not uncommon for retired police officers to keep views on their omission to achieve a conviction or cases that did not go to court … There are officers of the investigations from 2011 to 2015 who, in possession of all the facts, would not agree.”

A spokesperson for said: “Although we acknowledge that information that comes from civil procedures is interesting for the public and the press that may see it for the first time, it is material that has already been considered as part of the many studies and assessments that have already been carried out in the vast majority of cases.

“We are aware that in this recent case the parties have demonstrated the intention to pass on material to us, but we do not yet have to receive such correspondence. In the event that we do that, we will consider carefully and proportionally, so that the need to investigate real research lines, but acknowledge those that have already been established on previous studies.”