Phone hacking: Court documents suggest emails were destroyed

Senior employees at News International ordered that hundreds of thousands of staff emails be systematically destroyed in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, according to court documents released to the Daily Telegraph by a high court judge.

The papers, which were compiled by lawyers for the claimants in phone-hacking cases, are reported to be based on material provided by News International's management and standards committee.

According to the Telegraph, the document reveals a News International policy "to eliminate in a consistent manner" emails that "could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which a News International company is a defendant".

It says the News of the World was obliged since 2008 to keep any evidence relating to alleged phone-hacking, because of civil actions that had been launched.

However, the document refers to an "email deletion policy" set up in November 2009, in which hundreds of thousands of emails were destroyed on nine separate occasions.

According to the Telegraph, one of the documents reveals that three days after Sienna Miller began a phone-hacking claim demanding that relevant emails be preserved, a News International IT employee sent a memo saying: "There is a senior NI management requirement to delete this data as quickly as possible."

The papers also claim that at least one reporter carried on phone-hacking after the arrest of News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006.

The Hacked Off campaign, which represents some of the alleged victims of phone-hacking, said in a statement: "The revelations in today's Telegraph give us a glimpse of the shameful extent of the cover-up of illegal activity at News International.

"The 'email deletion policy' pursued by News International makes it blatantly clear that senior executives were entirely aware that phone hacking went beyond 'one rogue reporter'. Not only that, but they were willing to go to great lengths to destroy evidence that may be used against them by the victims of hacking.

"Such criminal activities have no place in British newspapers. The police operations and the Leveson Inquiry are a necessary consequence of the actions of News International, and it is critical they be given the support they need to expose the full extent of wrongdoing at News International."

News International had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

The documents have been uplodaded to Scribd by the Telegraph.

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