The US paper’s CEO has been accused of deceiving British police in a criminal investigation more than a decade ago
London police are investigating allegations that Washington Post CEO Will Lewis was involved in a cover-up of phone hacking by British tabloids in 2011.
The investigation was announced Wednesday by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in an opinion piece for the Guardian newspaper.
The hacking scandal involved the now-defunct tabloid News of the World, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
In June, Gordon Brown urged police to investigate Lewis, accusing him of overseeing the destruction of millions of emails and other evidence related to the case while serving as an executive for Murdoch’s UK company.
The Washington Post has confirmed that British police have established a “special enquiry team” to examine Brown’s allegations.
Investigations, some dating back to 2005, concluded that News of the World employees illegally tapped the phones of celebrities, politicians, members of the British royal family, and ordinary citizens to obtain stories. They were even found to have hacked the phone of a missing schoolgirl who was later found murdered.
The revelations sparked public outrage and a trial, leading to several high-profile resignations, including Murdoch’s as News Corporation director, and the closure of the paper in 2011.
Brown, who believes he was a target of tabloid hacking during his time as prime minister, has said he witnessed firsthand “the journalistic techniques” employed by Will Lewis, who became the Washington Post’s publisher and CEO in January of this year.
Lewis previously held several high-profile editorial positions in the British media. He was hired by Murdoch’s News International as group general manager in September 2010 and served as a chief liaison to the police.
Brown claims that Lewis attempted to mislead the police in 2011 by accusing him of conspiring to “steal” millions of emails relevant to the phone hacking investigation.
“He tried to blame me by explaining to the police that he had been told that I… was conspiring to steal these emails. The Murdoch team implied I had bribed one of their former employees to do so,” Brown wrote.
“Blazoned across the top of every edition of the Washington Post is the statement, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’,” Brown continued. “But what if the publisher himself is a master of the dark arts?”
Murdoch’s company has denied allegations that it deleted emails to conceal evidence, blaming an upgrade of an email system for the mass disappearance of messages.
At the time, Lewis told police that the emails were removed after an unsubstantiated tip claimed that Brown was plotting to steal them.
Lewis conceded that he had no evidence to back up the tip and could never corroborate it.
Murdoch has for decades led a vast media empire encompassing leading outlets in the US, the UK and Australia through his company News Corp. His media holdings included Fox News, Sky News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Sun, and The Times.
The 93-year-old mogul stepped down last year as chairman of News Corp, and was replaced by his son Lachlan.