1 Monday, 23 July 2012
2 (10.00 am)
3 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes, Mr Jay?
4 MR JAY: Sir, first of all, we're going to have an update
5 from DAC Akers, please.
6 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you very much indeed.
7 DAC SUE AKERS (recalled)
8 Questions by MR JAY
9 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: You've twice given evidence before,
10 Deputy Assistant Commissioner, I'd be grateful if you
11 bear in mind you're still subject to the oath you took
12 at the beginning.
13 A. Yes, sir.
14 MR JAY: Deputy Assistant Commissioner, you've kindly
15 provided the Inquiry with a further witness statement
16 dated 20 July under the standard statement of truth; is
17 that right?
18 A. Yes.
19 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: So that it's quite clear, this
20 statement, as indeed each of the others, has been
21 provided following notice issued under Section 21 of the
22 Inquiries Act.
23 A. Yes, sir.
24 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you.
25 MR JAY: Paragraph 4 of the statement, first of all. You
1
1 continue to lead all the operations. These, of course,
2 are Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta; is that
3 right?
4 A. That's correct.
5 Q. Paragraph 5, could I ask you to speak to that, please?
6 A. Investigating all of these investigations -- and they're
7 numerous -- we've worked obviously closely with the CPS,
8 and they have advised us regarding potential offences.
9 We've sought legal advice and in respect of both
10 individual and corporate offences, and also in relation
11 to our police powers and our options for investigating.
12 Q. Thank you. To date, as you explain in paragraph 6,
13 you've primarily been seeking the co-operation of
14 News International. Indeed the subsidiary company, NGN
15 as well, I suppose. But your dealings with the
16 Management Standards Committee, you explain that at the
17 end of June of this year, a Mr Zweifach replaced
18 Mr Klein; is that right?
19 A. That's correct.
20 Q. Can you help us with paragraph 8. Mr Lewis and
21 Mr Greenberg no longer attend the regular meetings. Can
22 you remember about when that change took place?
23 A. It took place fairly recently. At the beginning, when
24 we began the enquiries, all contact was through the
25 lawyers; then these were other lawyers, Burton Copeland.
2
1 Then Mr Lewis and Mr Greenberg were introduced to help
2 facilitate the co-operation, which they did. And in
3 mid-May this year, following a development in our
4 investigation, it caused the MSC to reconsider their
5 position and they decided that they would prefer the
6 meetings to be on a more formal basis with lawyers only.
7 I should say, that hasn't affected the co-operation,
8 which is still very good.
9 Q. Thank you. You explain in paragraph 9 in mid-May of
10 this year there was a development in your investigation,
11 which appears to have caused the MSC to reconsider their
12 relationship with you. And there was a pause for
13 several weeks in the voluntary disclosure material to
14 you. But a meeting took place on 1 June, Lord Grabiner
15 and other lawyers acting for the MSC, and voluntary
16 disclosure resumed. So the pause was for two or three
17 weeks; is that right?
18 A. Yes. The pause was from the middle of May until --
19 I think we then got more disclosure in the middle
20 of June. 14 June, I think, was when we got our next
21 disclosure. And it's continued since that date.
22 Q. In terms of the resources, you observe in paragraph 10
23 that the Management Standards Committee have committed
24 significant resources to assist these investigations,
25 continuing to co-operation and disclose documentation;
3
1 a professional and productive relationship and not
2 without its challenges.
3 Operation Weeting now, paragraph 12. You explain
4 the background. In paragraph 13, could you sum up the
5 position there as to the number of people who have been
6 arrested and when the bail has to be renewed or
7 reconsidered?
8 A. Yes. 15 current and former journalists have been
9 arrested and interviewed in relation to conspiracy to
10 intercept communications. 12 of those remain on
11 pre-charge bail, 11 of whom are due to return to various
12 police stations tomorrow, 24 July, other than one
13 individual who has been bailed to 2 August. One
14 non-journalist has also been bailed to tomorrow,
15 24 July.
16 Files in respect of all of these individuals are
17 currently with the CPS for advice as to potential
18 charges.
19 Q. Thank you. The perverting the course of justice matter,
20 I think we all understand what that relates to and who
21 the individuals are, but you've been careful not to name
22 them. It's summarised in paragraph 14; is that right?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. We can just note that.
25 Paragraph 15, the non-journalist; you want to change
4
1 paragraph 14 to paragraph 13?
2 A. Yes, the re-numbering has caused us to miss that. That
3 should read "the non-journalist referred to at
4 paragraph 13".
5 Q. You make it clear there that the alleged offence relates
6 to money-laundering matters, and the bail has been
7 extended to tomorrow's date.
8 Paragraphs 16 and 17, I think you've already covered
9 that satisfactorily?
10 A. I think I have.
11 Q. Unless there's anything else you'd like to add?
12 A. No.
13 Q. We're moving forward to Operation Elveden, which starts
14 at paragraph 18 of your statement. May I invite you,
15 please, to sum up the position there. It's
16 paragraph 19.
17 A. Yes. Elveden to date has conducted 41 arrests. Broken
18 down, that's 23 current or former journalists, four
19 police officers, nine current or former public officials
20 and five individuals who acted as conduits for corrupt
21 payments. There are currently files at the CPS for
22 three police officers and one journalist. And we're
23 continuing to supply the CPS with files as we get them
24 ready.
25 Q. The CPS are continuing to advise. There's a range of
5
1 offences there, which of course will be familiar to the
2 Inquiry and to criminal lawyers, but the
3 money-laundering, apart from the well-known corruption
4 offences and new Bribery Act offences, and before the
5 Bribery Act, it was of course the Prevention of
6 Corruption Act.
7 Can I ask you, please, about paragraph 21, if
8 I could ask you to summarise that?
9 A. Yes. Before I do, when I go on to talk about
10 developments in our investigation, I have in some cases
11 used the word "alleged" but I haven't repeated it
12 throughout. I think I said this on a previous occasion
13 when I gave evidence. Where I talk about these
14 developments, what I say is a matter of allegation and
15 not established fact.
16 In relation to Elveden then, our ongoing
17 investigation has recently revealed that in some cases
18 where we've identified a public official who's received
19 payments from News International, we've also established
20 that they have received payments from other newspapers.
21 Q. Thank you. I'm going to ask you now to deal with
22 paragraph 22 in some detail.
23 A. This relates to one case where the public official was
24 a prison officer at a high security prison during the
25 periods when the payments were made and the related
6
1 stories were published.
2 In this case, the individual's former partner has
3 acted as the conduit and facilitated the payments into
4 their bank account. And that bank account, from the
5 former partner, reveals numerous payments from
6 News International, Trinity Mirror and Express
7 Newspapers between April 2010 and June 2011. And those
8 payments total nearly £35,000.
9 There were in fact further payments after the prison
10 officer retired, which he did in June last year. The
11 last of which was made by Express Newspapers in February
12 this year.
13 Q. Thank you. And paragraph 23, you say that co-operation
14 from the MSC has enabled you to identify the stories to
15 which the News International payments related, and
16 further investigation has enabled you to identify
17 stories in the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, the
18 Daily Star and the Sunday Star that are suspected to be
19 linked to the payments?
20 A. Yes, that's right, sir.
21 Q. Again, in the same way as you carefully dealt with
22 paragraph 22, can you do the same, please, for
23 paragraph 24?
24 A. Yes. This describes another case we're investigating,
25 where again the public official is a prison officer at
7
1 a different high security prison. And again, that
2 individual's partners has facilitated the payments into
3 their account. These payments are from Trinity Mirror.
4 They were made between February 2006 and January 2012,
5 and the total amount in this case was in excess of
6 £14,000. Again, further investigation has enabled us to
7 identify stories in the Daily Mirror which we think are
8 linked to those payments.
9 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 25, the assessments you've made
10 to date, could you explain those to us, in particular
11 the public interest aspect?
12 A. Yes. As I say, ultimately the public interest test is
13 a matter for the CPS, but we make an assessment
14 ourselves as well around public interest as to whether
15 the alleged criminal conduct can be justified as being
16 in the public interest, as well as whether there are
17 grounds to suspect offences.
18 It's our assessment that there are reasonable
19 grounds to suspect that offences have been committed and
20 that the majority of these stories reveal very limited
21 material of genuine public interest.
22 Q. Thank you. On 11 July -- obviously only two weeks ago
23 or slightly less -- following the arrests of one
24 employee of Trinity Mirror and one employee of Express
25 News Group, letters were served on the head of legal for
8
1 those newspapers requesting specific evidential
2 material. Can I ask you, please, to explain what has
3 happened and to update us as to progress and
4 co-operation with those companies?
5 A. Yes. We've -- we asked for a response by 18 July to our
6 request for evidential material, which we think are in
7 the possession and control of both Trinity Mirror and
8 Express News Group. We've had those responses.
9 Trinity Mirror Group have asked us to obtain
10 a production order and indicated that they won't oppose
11 that. Express Newspapers have taken a slightly
12 different stance. They wish to proceed by way of
13 voluntary protocol, which would be more akin to how
14 we've co-operated with News International. And at the
15 moment we're in the process of drafting that voluntary
16 protocol.
17 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 27, further lines of inquiry
18 may result in further arrests.
19 In paragraph 28 now, Deputy Assistant Commissioner,
20 can you explain what's happening with Elveden and the
21 MSC, in particular the Sun newspaper?
22 A. Yes. These paragraphs I'm attempting to explain, as
23 asked in my Section 21, how co-operation has worked.
24 We opened our investigation, as we say, on the basis
25 of full co-operation, and the MSC then conducted their
9
1 own internal review of the Sun, which was not a request
2 made by us, but they did it nevertheless.
3 As a result of that, they voluntary provided a lot
4 of documentation, which evidenced suspected criminality
5 and which led to a couple of individual arrests and then
6 to very substantial arrest days, which were highly
7 publicised. They were on 28 January this year and then
8 again on 11 February, and involved the Sun newspaper.
9 Following that, those two arrest days, there was
10 considerable adverse publicity of both the MPS, the
11 police and the MSC, including threats of legal action
12 against the MSC.
13 Following that, there was a change in the nature of
14 the co-operation. We were being asked perhaps to
15 justify our requests to a degree that we perhaps
16 formerly hadn't been, and the material that we were
17 requesting was slower in being forthcoming.
18 The MSC were obviously very conscious to protect
19 legitimate journalistic sources, and of course the law
20 places very strict restrictions on the police obtaining
21 such material.
22 The comments are we started on the basis of full
23 co-operation, so any change in that co-operation could
24 adversely affect initial decisions that we'd made and
25 arrests that were made as well. But I should stress
10
1 that, despite challenges, quite correct and proper
2 challenges, the co-operation continues and we have
3 recently received a substantial amount of material.
4 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 31 you refer to an internal
5 review the MSC have conducted of their own volition, but
6 that has yielded no further evidence for you; is that
7 right?
8 A. Well, the MSC would say the result of the review was the
9 material that they had disclosed to us, but we haven't
10 received or -- I understand there is no formal report as
11 a result of their review.
12 Q. Okay. May we move forward to Operation Tuleta, and
13 I ask you, please, first of all in paragraph 33 to
14 summarise where we are. It's paragraphs 33 and 34.
15 A. Yes. "Tuleta" is a kind of over-arching name for
16 a number of discrete investigations. We're conducting
17 an assessment of 101 separate allegations of data
18 intrusion. These include allegations of phone hacking,
19 computer hacking, improper access to medical, banking
20 and other personal records.
21 In order to undertake this assessment, we've
22 collated relevant documentation from previous inquiries
23 and looked at electronic storage devices which had been
24 previously seized in other inquiries. And we're
25 gathered between 8 and 12 terabytes of data across 70
11
1 storage devices, which we're searching for evidence to
2 either support or contradict the allegations that have
3 been made by these 101 individuals. That's a very
4 substantial amount of documentation and data.
5 I know the last time I was here I was hopeless in
6 answering your question as to what that might amount to,
7 so I've done some homework and a terabyte, if downloaded
8 in the form of a kind of normal-size paperback, which is
9 then piled on top of one another, I'm told the terabyte
10 amounts to three and a half times the height of Everest.
11 So between 8 and 12 terabytes, whilst leaving rather
12 a large margin of error, I agree, it's still
13 a substantial amount of documentation.
14 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It creates its own problems for
15 analysis and research?
16 A. It absolutely does, because we can't look at every piece
17 of documentation. We have to be careful about how we
18 search it and what criteria we put in that -- in our
19 questions of the data.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes.
21 A. But continuing on, sir, to date we've made six arrests
22 under the Computer Misuse Act and/or in respect of
23 offences of handling stolen goods, subjects of which are
24 all on police bail pending completion of the arrest
25 phase and further investigation. As in the other cases,
12
1 in due course files will be submitted to the CPS for
2 charging advice.
3 MR JAY: Thank you. The MSC have been one of the sources of
4 material for Operation Tuleta purposes. Then
5 paragraph 36, you explain what happened in April of this
6 year. Can I ask you, please, to tell us about that?
7 A. Yes. As a result of the material that we've had
8 provided to us from the MSC, it seems that on occasions
9 we've found that material has been downloaded from and
10 is in possession of News International titles which
11 appear to have come from stolen mobile telephones.
12 It appears from some of the documentation, and
13 that's dated around late 2010, that one of the mobile
14 phones has been examined with a view to breaking its
15 code, its security code, so that the contents can be
16 downloaded by experts. And obviously a significant and
17 important line of inquiry for us is to identify the
18 experts that have been used.
19 Q. At the moment, as you say, their identities are unknown
20 to you but they're likely to exist in different parts of
21 the country.
22 Paragraph 38, tell us about that, please, and then
23 lead into paragraph 39.
24 A. We'll obviously request now further documentation from
25 the MSC as a result of what we've discovered in respect
13
1 of the stolen mobile phones, and we're hopeful that that
2 will produce further relevant information which will
3 then lead us to the expert services, and when we reach
4 them, at that point we hope to establish whether in fact
5 these are just isolated incidents or just the tip of an
6 iceberg.
7 Q. Mm. Thank you.
8 Paragraph 40, one mobile telephone theft took place
9 in Manchester and another in South West London, and this
10 may suggest that this is more than an isolated local
11 issue, but as you're careful to say, you're at a very
12 early stage in the investigation.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Paragraph 41, please, it's a similar pattern, I think,
15 with the co-operation of the MSC. It's now only lawyers
16 who --
17 A. Yes. The co-operation is exactly the same in terms of
18 the make-up of the MSC team that deals with our offices,
19 and now we deal entirely through the lawyers.
20 Q. You say that initially there was a challenge to
21 Operation Tuleta's request for information about the
22 apparent handling of the stolen phones and subsequent
23 downgrades, but now there's a willingness to assist.
24 A. Yes, there is.
25 Q. Victims next. You're taking the story forward from when
14
1 you last gave evidence. Can I ask you, please, to
2 summarise paragraphs 42 to 46?
3 A. Yes. I think the last time I gave evidence we were
4 still in the process of notifying victims and potential
5 victims of phone hacking. We've completed that process
6 now as far as we can insofar as we could identify the
7 victims who we think have been likely to have been
8 subjected to phone hacking. And so we've notified
9 a total of 2,615, of which 702 we think are likely to
10 have been victims.
11 Q. Mm.
12 A. We have a figure above 702 who we think are likely to
13 have been victims but, for one reason or another, we're
14 unable to contact those people. That's why there's
15 a discrepancy in the figures between paragraphs 44 and
16 45.
17 MR JAY: Great, that's very clear. Thank you very much,
18 Deputy Assistant Commissioner.
19 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Ms Akers, I received evidence of the
20 response which the police received when they visited
21 News International in 2006. Would it be right for me to
22 conclude at this stage that whatever might have happened
23 in the past at News International titles, the senior
24 management and corporate approach now has been to assist
25 and come clean, from which I might be able to draw the
15
1 inference that there is a change in culture, practice
2 and approach?
3 A. Yes, sir. I don't disagree with any of that.
4 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you.
5 It is obviously very important that when I report,
6 and the exercise of this Inquiry will come to an end, as
7 I'm sure at some stage so will your operations, it has
8 the benefit of absolutely up-to-date information.
9 Of course, I am not concerned about individuals at
10 this stage, I am merely concerned with what's gone on in
11 the past and what I might derive from that as to
12 culture, practice and ethics, and what impact that might
13 have on the future. But in order that I am absolutely
14 up-to-date as far as is possible, I would be grateful if
15 you would be prepared to return in the autumn so that
16 I know what the position is -- it's obviously
17 fast-moving -- and in that way at least can give those
18 who read my report the benefit of what that up-to-date
19 position is. I hope that won't cause you too much
20 inconvenience.
21 A. No, sir, I'd be very happy to do so.
22 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you very much indeed. Thank
23 you.
24 Right.
52