Irish Secretary of the National Union of Journalists with overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of union activities, organisation and financial affairs in Ireland North and South at the time of giving evidence. He was also a member of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) Executive Council and of the Press Council of Ireland's finance and administrative committee. Offered the Inquiry a brief history of recent legal debates on the press in Ireland including proposals for a draconian privacy bill. Told the Inquiry that the UK obsession with editors was not mirrored in Ireland.
Solicitor representing News International at the Leveson Inquiry. Experienced in a broad range of commercial and financial-services litigation, having worked on a number of high profile cases including advising the administrators of the Lehman Brothers companies following the bank's collapse in September 2008.
Group Finance Director of Northern & Shell, owners of the Express newspapers. Told the Inquiry the group operated a stringent approval process whereby any payment above £5,000 had to be approved by a main board director. Cash payments by journalists would have to go through the expenses system. He was not aware of any payments being made to private investigators, he said.
Vaghela was Group Finance Director of Trinity Mirror at the time of giving evidence. He joined Mirror Group in 1994 as an Internal Auditor and was subsequently Group Treasurer and then Director of Accounting and Treasury. He outlined the status of Trinity Mirror, which was listed on the UK Stock Exchange with no single proprietor or shareholder with a controlling stake. He said he had never felt under commercial pressure beyond promoting the success of the group through strategies that were lawful in all respects. All staff had to abide by Mirror's Code of Business Conduct which prohibited bribery, he said.
Set up by the Press Council to raise a levy on the newspaper and periodical industries to finance the Council, which had previously been funded directly by newspaper proprietors. Known as "PressBoF", it later funded the Press Complaints Commission. This arrangement was intended to ensure secure and independent financial support for effective self-regulation. The Board ceased to operate following the abolition of the Press Complaints Commission in 2014, and it was dissolved in August 2016.
