The former News Corp. private
detective who hacked phones for the News of the World had U.S.
telephone numbers among the details of British hacking victims
in his notes, a person familiar with the matter said.
Glenn Mulcaire, jailed in 2007 for illegally accessing
mobile-phone messages of people in the U.K., had the numbers of
singer Charlotte Church’s Los Angeles agent and New York
publicist among thousands of pages of notes seized by police,
said the person, who declined to be identified because they
aren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The evidence, held by the police in London, may be of
interest to U.S. prosecutors. New York-based News Corp. has
been the subject of a probe into whether News of the World
sought to hack phones of victims of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
A separate U.S. inquiry was begun into whether bribes of U.K.
police officers violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or
FCPA, which bars overseas corruption by U.S. companies.
The presence of the U.S. phone numbers in Mulcaire’s notes
also may complicate the company’s effort there to contain
lawsuits. News Corp. (NWS) has said it’s cooperating with three U.K.
police probes into phone hacking, computer hacking and bribery
of public officials by two of its tabloids.
“I’m going to work with the authorities to the fullest
extent I can, and if there’s anything I can do to help the case,
I will,” said Church’s publicist, Kevin Chiaramonte of Paul
Freundlich Associates in New York, in a phone interview. The
discovery, he said, was a “bit of a shock.” The publicist said
he expects to be contacted by Scotland Yard, which declined to
comment on the U.S. phone numbers. The notes didn’t indicate if
the phones had been hacked, the person said.
Personal Phones Hacked
Church, 26, whose personal phones and those of her parents
were hacked by Mulcaire for at least four years, settled a
lawsuit against News Corp.’s U.K. unit yesterday.
Calls to News Corp. U.K. unit’s press office in London,
News Corp. spokesman Jack Horner in New York, and Ellen Davis, a
spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, weren’t
immediately returned.
Church’s Los Angeles-based agent works for the Hollywood
talent-management company William Morris Endeavor LLC, or WME,
the person said, declining to identify them. A message left at
the company’s office wasn’t returned.
Two numbers of London employees at Irving Azoff’s Live
Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV), who worked with Church, were also
among Mulcaire’s notes. A call to Live Nation wasn’t immediately
returned.
Wedding Singer
Church sang at News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s wedding
in 1999 when she was 13-year-old and was later targeted by his
newspapers while she grew up.
Church, whose 2005 song “Crazy Chick” reached No. 2 on
the U.K. pop charts, told a judge-led inquiry into press ethics
in November that Mulcaire’s evidence includes “many pages of
names, numbers, notes, addresses, pin numbers and the fact that
my mother and I were each a ‘project.”’
News International, which shuttered News of the World in
July in an attempt to contain public anger, still faces possible
claims by more than 800 “likely” victims identified by police
as they sift through 11,000 pages of Mulcaire’s notes.
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with
News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.
The case is Church v. News Group Newspapers, High Court of
Justice Chancery Division, No. HC11C03393.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Larson in London at
elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Anthony Aarons at
aaarons@bloomberg.net
Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/news-corp-hacker-mulcaire-said-to-have-u-s-phone-numbers-among-his-notes.html
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