A police watchdog is investigating claims that a senior Scotland Yard officer tipped off an executive at News International with information about the original phone hacking inquiry into the News of the World.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission announced that it was investigating whether the leak concerning the 2006 police investigation was in the "public domain". If not, it will examine if the officer - believed to be a superintendent - committed a criminal offence or should face a misconduct hearing.
The inquiry, which was carried out by counter terrorism detectives, resulted in the conviction of the News of the World's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and the paper's then royal editor Clive Goodman.
They were both jailed in 2007 after pleading guilty to hacking the phones of aides to Prince William. The IPCC said there was no evidence to suggest the senior officer was paid by the News International executive. The officer works in the Specialist Operations branch, although it is not known if he was directly involved in the original hacking investigation.
Scotland Yard said: "After careful consideration of the circumstances in this case it has been decided that suspending this officer or restricting his duties would not be appropriate. This will obviously be kept under review."
The IPCC launched the inquiry after receiving information on February 7 from the Met's Operation Elveden team, which is investigating police corruption. They are examining emails involving executives and staff at News International which have been passed to police by the company's management.
According to court papers, bosses at the Murdoch media empire sought to destroy "unhelpful" emails in an apparent cover-up of phone hacking.
Documents show executives created a policy to delete messages which could be used against the company in legal actions brought by victims.
The newly-released memos reveal the defunct News of the World had a legal obligation to preserve evidence relating to phone-hacking from 2008 because the newspaper had been notified of civil claims. But in November 2009, NI apparently created an "Email Deletion Policy" to "eliminate in a consistent manner" emails "that could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which an NI company is a defendant". NI today declined to comment.
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