text: There’s no doubt the public outcry over the News of the World’s illegal hacking of mobile phones and payments to police officials is serious. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t close profitable newspapers willingly. (Heck, he doesn’t even like to close massively unprofitable papers.) But is it so serious that a top News Corp. executive — perhaps even Murdoch himself — could end up being convicted on criminal charges? 
   
   Andreas Whittam Smith thinks so. He cites the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, the law used to imprison News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who teamed up to invade the voicemail accounts of various celebrities. Smith notes that the law, as worded, has remarkably broad scope: 
   
   Where an offence under any provision of this Act… is committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly. 
   
   “If you have presided over an organisation that has conducted criminal activities, either you gave the orders, or you gave permission, or you connived, but if you did none of these things, then you were neglectful,” writes Smith. “That is the trap, that is the box in which the directors of News International will find themselves.” 
   
   I ran this reading by Jonathan P. Armstrong, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris who specializes in corporate law with a concentration in technology and compliance. “My view is that might be a stretch,” he says. That’s because the application of the “attributable to any neglect” clause isn’t quite as broad as it sounds. “That sort of clause exists because it’s lifted out of health and safety legislation,” he says. “Say you had an airplane and you never changed the tires. I don’t think, in the U.K., something like failure to have a policy preventing hacking — that wouldn’t be a big enough neglect to get by a jury.” 
   
   Where the neglect cause could conceivably apply is to Rebekah Brooks, News International’s CEO. Brooks has denied having any knowledge of the illegal hacking, but she was editor of the NotW at the time it published stories that cited voice mail messages obtained that way, and it was Brooks who first hired the private investigator who hacked the voicemail of murdered teenager Milly Dowler. In Brooks’s case, therefore, it’s possible to argue that the only way she wouldn’t have known about the hacking was by making it clear she didn’t want to know. “The quaint old English saying for that we have is ‘Nelsonian ignorance,’” says Armstrong. The phrase refers to Lord Nelson, the famed admiral who was blind in one eye. 
   
   Already, police are reportedly planning to arrest Andy Coulson, who succeeded Brooks as editor, either on similar grounds or because they have evidence that he did, in fact, condone the hacking. 
   
   But don’t expect the arrests to rise to the very top of the News Corp. food chain — to Rupert Murdoch, or even to his son, James — unless evidence tying them directly to the illegal hacks comes to light. “The reality is cases that are that much of a stretch normally don’t run in the U.K.,” says Armstrong. “We don’t have the same system you have in the U.S. of an attorney general who might see a lot of merit, politically, in seeing this go ahead. Generally speaking, prosecutions will only run where the prosecutors are convinced they’ll be able to persuade the jury beyond all reasonable doubt that the guy had his hands all over this.” ||||| The 168-year-old News of the World, the widest-read paper in the English-speaking world, has acknowledged that it hired “investigators” who hacked into the phone accounts of politicians, celebrities and ordinary Britons in an attempt to develop stories. The targets of the paper’s hacking apparently included the families of British troops killed in Afghanistan, victims of the 2005 London transit bombings and a 13-year-old missing girl who was later found dead. 
   
   Murdoch, 80, has weathered criticism and crises before, most notably the near-bankruptcy of News Corp. in 1990. But the phone-hacking scandal is easily the most dire public-relations debacle of the Australian-turned-American’s storied business career. 
   
   Public outrage over the phone tapping has led to rare condemnation of Murdoch in the British Parliament and even from Prime Minister David Cameron, who has enjoyed Murdoch’s political support. Because of his outsize role in the U.K. media, Murdoch has been among the most powerful and influential forces in British politics for many years. 
   
   Although there is no evidence that Murdoch was aware of the News of the World’s illegal behavior, the scandal has shaken his dominant role in the British media establishment and has tarnished his stewardship of an empire that includes such U.S. properties as the Fox TV network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the 20th Century Fox movie studio. 
   
   The scandal has also threatened to derail News Corp.’s bid to gain control of British Sky Broadcasting, the largest pay TV provider in the United Kingdom. News Corp. owns 39 percent of the satellite company and is trying to gobble up the balance in a deal worth about $12 billion. Regulatory approval of its bid is pending, and the outcome could be an indicator of public sentiment toward the newspaper’s behavior. 
   
   Some observers suggested Thursday that the scandal could affect who succeeds Murdoch at the top of his company, which he built into a colossus after inheriting two small Australian papers from his father 58 years ago. Murdoch’s heir apparent, son James, oversees the company’s British newspaper division and announced the tabloid’s demise in its London newsroom. 
   
   Many here are calling for the dismissal of Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who is chief executive of its immediate parent company, News International. Brooks was editor of the paper in 2002 when a private detective working on its behalf allegedly hacked into the voice-mail of slain teenager Milly Dowling and erased one of the messages. But both Rupert and James Murdoch have remained loyal to Brooks. “I am satisfied that Rebekah — her leadership and her standard of ethics and her standard of conduct — is very good,” the younger Murdoch told BBC News in an interview. ||||| I am going to describe how action should be swiftly taken to curb Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers now that supposition and dark suspicion have become proven fact. News International, a large and powerful media organisation, Mr Murdoch's company, systematically invades people's privacy through phone hacking, corrupts the police by making large payments to individual officers, and compromises fair trials as a result of publishing reports that are likely to prejudice juries. 
   
   It operates without restraint and has no sense of right or wrong. It doesn't yet represent the same threat to British society as the Italian mafia does to Italy. But there are sufficient similarities to tell us that if we don't act now, worse will follow. For unchecked, News International's illegal practices would grow ever more far reaching, more police officers would be suborned, more trials ruined. And more politicians would be bent to Mr Murdoch's will. For, just as Italian politicians have courted the mafia, so British politicians have fawned over News International executives and editors. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, even brought a former editor into Downing Street who, it is now alleged, authorised the payments of bribes to the police. Well meaning though large advertisers may be in withdrawing their business from the News of the World, that won't curb Mr Murdoch. And although I have willingly signed up to the campaign that calls for a public inquiry ( hackinginquiry.org/), that would only be a staging post. In fact, the mechanisms to bring the directors of News International to book already exist. They are part of the law of the land. 
   
   The most important step is to make use of the powers contained in what is known as The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. It was under Section 1 of this Act that the News of the World phone hackers were convicted and imprisoned. So far as the directors and executives of News International in their personal capacities are concerned, the crucial passage in the legislation comes towards the end of the Act. It is Section 79. 
   
   Forgive me for now penetrating deeply into the thickets of the law, but eventually, in the growing scandal of the News of the World's behaviour, everything will turn on Section 79. I hope charges will be brought under this section. It is entitled the "Criminal liability of directors etc". (I like the "etc"). It states that "Where an offence under any provision of this Act... is committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly." 
   
   To see how Section 79 might work, start with the smaller fry, say Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International. In a letter to staff published earlier this week, Ms Brooks, following the revelations that her reporters had hacked into the mobile phone of the murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, when she was editor of the News of the World, attempted to exculpate herself. "We were all appalled and shocked when we heard about these allegations yesterday... At the moment we only know what we have read... I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations." In other words, Ms Brooks is claiming that she was unaware of the criminal invasion of privacy that had the effect of vainly raising the hopes of the parents that their daughter was still alive and that at the same impeded the police operation. 
   
   But go back to the Act. To avoid criminal proceedings, having not initiated or consented to the Dowler phone hacking won't do as a defence because there are other tests. Let us go to these. Connived? That would require an examination of how Ms Brooks habitually conducted herself as editor. "Connived", for instance, might be warmly congratulating reporters who produced stories that could only have been acquired illegally. But perhaps there was no connivance. Even so, Ms Brooks would not be home safe and dry. "Where an offence is... attributable to any neglect", states the Act. 
   
   This is the catch-all section of the Act. If you have presided over an organisation that has conducted criminal activities, either you gave the orders, or you gave permission, or you connived, but if you did none of these things, then you were neglectful. That is the trap, that is the box in which the directors of News International will find themselves. It is also the bit that Ms Brooks would find hard to understand. For, as she indicated earlier this week, she isn't going to resign."I am aware of the speculation about my position. Therefore it is important you all know that as chief executive, I am determined to lead the company to ensure we do the right thing and resolve these serious issues." This comes straight out of the dishonorable, cowardly, defensive, mind-your-back school of management that says that if I didn't know, I cannot be blamed. It doesn't recognise neglect. Instead it substitutes the self-serving, conceited thesis that "only I, who was at the helm during the disaster, can steer us to safety". 
   
   But what about Mr Murdoch? Would he be touched by Section 79? Only a lawyer could give an authoritative opinion. But I note these words in the Act. It bears on a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or "any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity" (my italics). 
   
   Whether Mr Murdoch falls under this rubric would be for a court to decide. But I have no doubt that Mr Murdoch does act as if he were a director or a manager. For although technically News International is part of a public company, for all intents and purposes it is conducted as if it were a court with Mr Murdoch as its sovereign. One reason why Ms Brooks isn't resigning is that she is a courtier. Courtiers don't resign. They stay or go at the monarch's pleasure. And while it may be difficult for company lawyers to understand a monarchical organisation, judges should do so – for they are, after all, "Her Majesty's Judges". 
   
   Rupert Murdoch has owned the News of the World for nearly 42 years. When he arrived in England as an unknown Australian newspaper proprietor to bid for the News of the World in 1969 in opposition to Robert Maxwell, I went to meet him at Heathrow Airport and travelled into town with him. I was a young financial journalist. When we got to the Savoy Hotel, he went up to reception to sign in. As soon as he was given his room number, he demanded that he be given a different room. I asked him why. You see, he said, I fear that my room will have been bugged. 
   
   Even then phone hacking and electronic eavesdropping obsessed him. Now they will be his undoing and Section 79 could be his final reckoning. 
   
   a.whittamsmith@independent.co.uk
target: – Rupert Murdoch, who yesterday shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, faces the worst PR crisis of his six-decade career, reports the Washington Post. So far, the scandal is threatening to derail Murdoch's $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting. It could even force Murdoch to testify before the British Parliament under oath. But as bad as things are, could Murdoch himself end up in jail? One analyst, writing in the Independent, thinks so. Andreas Whittam Smith explains that phone hackers were convicted under Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and he points readers to Section 79 of the act, which states that when a corporate body commits "an offense under any provision of this act ... with the consent or connivance of ... a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offense and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly." Perhaps Murdoch is a stretch, but observers think Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International and former editor at News of the World, could be in danger of criminal charges. Just like this former editor.