Top News of the World Lawyer Accused by Murdoch Arrested
Four months after News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch threw his News of the World legal chief under the bus during his testimony to the Leveson Inquiry, police in London arrested that lawyer this morning, the 25th arrest in the phone-hacking scandal. The interesting thing about Tom Crone, the former legal manager for News of the World, is that his role at the paper was to keep it out of legal trouble, but in the end it was his own former employer, News parent company News Corporation, that provided the evidence that got Crone taken in. "A person familiar with the situation said Mr Crone, 60, was arrested based on information provided by the special committee set up by the parent group News Corp to investigate the scandal and how senior executives of NI reacted," reports the Financial Times' Ben Fenton.
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Crone had been with News International, the News Corp. subdivision that ran News of the World, for 25 years, where The Telegraph's Martin Evans reports "his main focus was concentrated on steering the News of the World out of legal difficulty." But he became something of a scapegoat for Rupert Murdoch, who testified in April that a "clever lawyer" with the company had arranged a cover-up that prevented Murdoch and his son, James, from learning about phone hacking earlier. Crone identified himself as that lawyer and called Murdoch's accusation a "shameful lie." But that wasn't enough to convince police, who were working from evidence provided by News Corp. itself.
