OK. Slightly breaking the rules here. I've just filed a story for a US Magazine about papers released tonight which detail the secret meeting between Murdoch Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch to seal his (frankly illegal) acquisition of the Times Group in 1981. It was always filled with contention. The Tories failed to refer the bid to the Monopolies Commission, even though (with the two top selling tabloids) that gave Murdoch 27 percent of newspaper market in the UK - he now has 37 percent of readers.
But here's a story Kossacks can work on. It concerns four bits of information which could be intimately related
1. This Monday BBC1's flagship investigative news show, Panorama. cancelled a program (injuncted by Newscorp?) which was billed as a story about ex cops and Newscorp hacking commercial rivals. I'm still trying to find out what happened to this programme. It could well have been superinjuncted.
2. Neil Chernoweth's book 'Virtual Murdoch' describes the nightmare of his Israeli subsidiary NDS, which holds all the encryption keys to satellite cards. In Israel, some of his employees were arrested in the 90s for hacking and recording the phone calls of rivals on the board. The same company was accused by Canal Plus of hacking its encryption in 2002. A similar case is in court in regards to Sky Italia - see below.
3. The Guardian reveals today Commander Roy Adams, suspected of involvement in the notorious Stephen Lawrence murder went to work for NDS in 1993.
4. Yesterday, out of the blue, Newscorp sold NDS
I've got to got to bed. It's past 4 a.m. UK time. Maybe my fellow Kossacks can help fill in the missing pieces
UPDATE: So much for sleep. The author Neil Chernoweth has just filed a story which gives the hacking background in Italy. It goes right to Tom Mockridge (Rebekah Brooks' replacement) and details the complex shenanigans with Sky Italia. It hasn't yet made the frankly devastating connection to the bent copper who was suspected, because of his connections with one of the suspect's fathers, of tampering with the investigation of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence
http://afr.com/...
Tom Mockridge, the former Australian executive tapped to replace Rebekah Brooks as head of News International, the British of arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is himself at risk of being caught up in a hacking scandal that unfolded on his watch at Sky Italia.
Italian prosecutors have told a criminal trial in Sicily that a computer hacker recruited by a former Scotland Yard officer working for News Corporation and paid through News International caused millions of dollars of damage to a rival company that provided services to Italian pay television broadcaster Sky Italia.
On July 14, the day before Mockridge’s appointment, the News Corp arm at the centre of the Italian scandal, NDS Limited, brought forward plans to float, a move that will distance News from the trial in Sicily.
The claim involves corporate espionage rather than invasions of privacy and comes as Rupert Murdoch hinted he would not be succeeded by his son James, News International chairman, under whose watch the phone hacking occurred.
Mockridge reports to James Murdoch.