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Detective guilty of offering NoW leak for cash | Detective guilty of offering NoW leak for cash |
(35 minutes later) | |
A senior Metropolitan Police detective has been found guilty of offering to sell inside information on the phone-hacking probe to the News of the World. | A senior Metropolitan Police detective has been found guilty of offering to sell inside information on the phone-hacking probe to the News of the World. |
A Southwark Crown Court jury convicted Det Ch Insp April Casburn, 53, from Essex, of misconduct in public office. | A Southwark Crown Court jury convicted Det Ch Insp April Casburn, 53, from Essex, of misconduct in public office. |
Her phone call came as the inquiry into hacking by the NoW reopened in 2010. | |
The counter-terrorism officer is the first person to be prosecuted under Operation Elveden, the probe into payments by journalists to officials. | |
The Sunday tabloid was closed down in 2011 amid outrage over its hacking into the voicemails. | |
Casburn has been released on bail ahead of sentencing. | Casburn has been released on bail ahead of sentencing. |
The judge, Mr Justice Fulford, was told she is currently in the process of adopting a three-year-old child. | |
He said: "A real possibility is an immediate custodial sentence, but I'm obviously going to have to consider very carefully the issues that we've ventilated this afternoon and any other mitigation." | |
Speaking outside court, Det Ch Supt Gordon Briggs said it is "totally unacceptable from a serving police officer to leak confidential information about a live police investigation to journalists for private gain. | |
"In doing so they let down the public and they let down their hardworking honest colleagues... today's verdict demonstrates our commitment to rooting out that kind of corruption." | |
'Gross breach' | |
The trial heard that in September 2010 Casburn contacted the News of the World, days after Scotland Yard reopened its inquiry. | |
The newspaper did not print a story after the call and no money changed hands. | |
But prosecutor Mark Bryant-Heron said Casburn was guilty of a "gross breach" of public trust and had "sought to undermine a highly sensitive and high-profile investigation". | |
The charge related to when Casburn, from Hatfield Peverel in Essex, was managing the national terrorist financial investigation unit. | |
Southwark Crown Court heard one of her team had been asked to carry out financial investigations as part of the Scotland Yard inquiry into phone hacking. | |
The detective, at the time the most senior female investigator in Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command, denied asking for cash - and said she had contacted the newspaper out of the public interest. | |
Casburn told the jury she was angry that her superiors at Scotland Yard had decided to divert officers from counter terrorism. |