London - News Corp's James Murdoch on Thursday denied claims that he had given “mistaken'' evidence on the phone-hacking scandal to British lawmakers this week.
Murdoch, chairman of News Corp's UK newspaper arm News International, said on Tuesday that he had not been aware of an email that contained transcripts of hacked voicemails when he agreed to a large out-of-court settlement with a victim of the hacking.
But former News Of The World editor Colin Myler and News International's former chief legal adviser cast doubt on his account on Thursday. It was the first time that it has been publicly suggested that Murdoch was aware of the scale of the problem at earlier date that he has admitted.
In a statement, Myler and Crone said they had told Murdoch of an email from a News of the World reporter to ``Neville,'' believed to refer to chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, when payment was made to English soccer executive Gordon Taylor, sometime before mid-2009.
“Just by way of clarification relating to Tuesday’s hearing, we would like to point out that James Murdoch's recollection of what he was told when agreeing to settle the Gordon Taylor litigation was mistaken,'' their statement said.
“In fact, we did inform him of the 'for Neville' email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor's lawyers.''
During three hours of questioning, Murdoch was asked by lawmaker Tom Watson: “Did you see or were you made aware of the full Neville email, the transcript of the hacked voicemail messages?''
“No, I was not aware of that at the time,'' Murdoch told the committee, adding he was only aware of “key facts and evidence'' that came to light at the end of 2010 when detectives re-launched a probe into phone-hacking and allegations that reporters had bribed police officers.
In a statement released on Thursday in response to the claim from Myler and Crone, Murdoch said: “I stand behind my testimony to the Select Committee.''
When contacted by Reuters, Crone said: “I don't think I want to add anything.''
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the committee, said they may push Murdoch for clarification about the issue.
“I haven't seen the statement but if it is the case that Colin Myler and Tom Crone are in conflict on a serious issue then that is a matter we would want to obtain a response from James Murdoch on,'' he told Reuters.
“James Murdoch has already said he will provide written evidence on other issues and we could ask for this to be clarified this way.'' - Reuters