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Phone-hack saga: Cop bung probe nets seventh suspect

Woman cuffed by Yard this morning

A 37-year-old woman was arrested this morning by Scotland Yard officers working on Operation Elveden, which is an investigation into allegations of "inappropriate payments to police".

The unnamed suspect was cuffed at a home in Surrey, the Met said. She is currently being held in custody at a south London police station.

Alleged corrupt payments to officers at Scotland Yard by people working for the now-defunct News International-owned News of the World is being probed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The investigation is being undertaken in tandem with Operation Weeting and Operation Tuleta.

So far, 16 people have been cuffed by police probing alleged phone-hacking claims - said to have been rampant at the axed Sunday tabloid, which was part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire until July this year.

Operation Tuleta, which is a probe into alleged computer hacking by newspaper employees or contractors, led to the arrest of its first suspect last month: A 52-year-old man from Milton Keynes.

Charges are yet to be brought against any of the suspects arrested under those three Met investigations.

Separately, News International chairman James Murdoch wrote to the media, culture and sport select committee this week confirming that he had been sent an email in June 2008 from the NotW editor Colin Myler that stated:

"Update on the Gordon Taylor (Professional Football Association) case. Unfortunately it is as bad as we feared."

The email went on to mention "a further nightmare scenario" that suggested that Joanne Armstrong, an in-house lawyer at the PFA, had also had her phone hacked.

Myler requested a meeting with Murdoch to discuss the matter. However, in his letter to the committee, the NI chairman claimed that he hadn't read the full email on his BlackBerry handset, which he typically received messages on outside of normal work hours.

"I am confident that I did not review the full email chain at the time or afterwards, nor do I recall a conversation with Mr Myler over that weekend," he added.

Murdoch Junior ended the missive by reiterating that he stood by his testimony to the committee, when he insisted that he was unaware that phone hacking at the News of the World went beyond "one rogue reporter". ®

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