Australia: Murdoch US empire under threat

The Sydney Morning Herald

Murdoch facing US blowtorch
By Ed Pilkington, Dan Sabbagh, Andrew Sparrow

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/murdoch-facing-us-blowtorch-20120213-1t23r.html#ixzz1mH59kX3E


News Corporation faces the increased prospect of a full-blown inquiry by US authorities as part of the continuing investigation into alleged bribery of public officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in the wake of the latest round of arrests of journalists at Britain's The Sun newspaper over the weekend.

Rupert Murdoch flies into London this week at a time of turmoil for Britain's best-selling newspaper, with journalists on the title angry at News Corp's management and standards committee, whose reconstruction of the company's email archive produced evidence that led to the arrests.

The threat of prosecution under the US act - which criminalises bribes to public officials overseas - exposes News Corp to tens of millions of dollars in fines and the risk of imprisonment of its executive officers.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Mike Koehler, an expert in foreign corrupt practices law at Butler University, said Saturday's arrests marked an escalation in the risk of a prosecution for the New York-based News Corp. ''This spreads the alleged bribery to a completely different newspaper, to a different segment of the company and to other public officials,'' he said.

The US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, launched a preliminary investigation into News Corp last July. The FBI is known to be involved in the investigation.

It is also understood that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting inquiries.

In Monday's edition of The Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote that multiple inquiries into the press were hurting free speech and constituted a ''witch hunt'', that left Britain behind former Soviet states on press freedom.

''In what would at any other time cause uproar … among civil liberty … campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang,'' Kavanagh wrote. While News Corp was right to hand over evidence, some reporters ''have been held, at least on the evidence so far revealed, for simply doing their jobs'' for the company.

Guardian News & Media, Agence France-Presse

http://www.smh.com.au/world/murdoch-facing-us-blowtorch-20120213-1t23r.html