LONDON: Rebekah Brooks, then boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, arranged to meet Andy Coulson just days before he resigned as Prime Minister David Cameron’s media chief over alleged phone-hacking at the paper both had once edited, a court heard yesterday.
Brooks and Coulson are standing trial along with six other defendants who face a variety of charges relating to phone-hacking at the News of the World, illegal payments to officials for stories, and impeding police inquiries.
All eight have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The jury at the Old Bailey were shown evidence that Brooks, then chief executive of News International, had arranged to meet Coulson “somewhere discreet” on January 14, 2011.
The timing is sensitive because that month, Coulson was under intense pressure to resign from his post as director of communications at Number 10 Downing Street over allegations of phone-hacking at the paper under his editorship years earlier.
Coulson did eventually resign on January 21. The phone-hacking scandal escalated later in 2011, causing Murdoch to shut down the News of the World and Cameron to order a public inquiry into the practices, culture and ethics of the press at which Brooks and Murdoch gave evidence. The inquiry revealed close links between senior figures in the Murdoch press and powerful politicians including Cameron, hence the sensitivity of the meeting between his media chief and the head of News International at a time of mounting scandal.
REUTERS
