Two former aides to media mogul Rupert Murdoch were charged with paying bribes for information on Britain’s royal family and the military, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Former News International head Rebekah Brooks and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who also served as Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director, were charged along with three other people for making illegal payments to U.K. authorities.
It was the latest charges to be announced in the phone-hacking scandal that forced the shuttering of News of the World in 2011.
Brooks, along with The Sun’s chief reporter John Kay and Ministry of Defense strategy officer Bettina Jordan-Barber, “conspired together” between January 2004 and January 2012 ” to commit misconduct in public office,” said the Crown Prosecution Service.
Jordan-Barber allegedly gave The Sun, which is owned by Murdoch, information for stories for around $160,000, reported The Independent.
Coulson and royal correspondent Clive Goodman were also charged with conspiring on two separate occasions ending in 2005, prosecutors alleged. These incidents were separate from the charges against Brooks, Kay, and Jordan-Barber.
Coulson allowed for payments to unidentified officials for information for a palace phone directory called the “green book,” according to the Independent.
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