LONDON, (Reuters) – A technology firm has told British legislators it was aware of the deletion of hundreds of thousands of emails at the request of News Corp unit News International between April 2010 and last month, parliamentarian Keith Vaz said on Monday.
The revelation came in a letter by the firm, HCL, to the Home Affairs Select Committee, of which Vaz is chairman.
“I am most surprised by the contents of the letter sent on behalf of HCL,” Vaz told Reuters. “The fact that so many emails have been deleted at the request of News International raises a number of further questions which we will continue to probe.”
British police are investigating the extent of phone-hacking at the now defunct News of the World Sunday tabloid which was owned by News International, the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
The paper had long maintained that illegally hacking into the voicemails of celebrities and members of the royal family had been confined to one “rogue reporter” who was jailed for four months in 2007.
But police now have a list of 4,000 possible targets including a missing schoolgirl, later found murdered, and families of victims of the 2005 London bombings, as well as politicians and celebrities.
