Trinity Mirror bosses accused of denying scale of phone hacking
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Version 0 of 1. A former Sunday Mirror journalist who pleaded guilty to phone hacking has accused Trinity Mirror management of repeatedly denying the extent of hacking at the company. Graham Johnson, the former investigations editor of the Sunday Mirror who pleaded guilty to hacking in November, accused Trinity Mirror chairman David Grigson of “not being straight” with shareholders in a fiery confrontation at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday. Johnson said that the company had not properly conducted an internal investigation into phone hacking, criticising Grigson’s assertion to shareholders at last year’s meeting that the company had done everything short of “ripping up the floor boards” to investigate hacking allegations. “[Grigson] didn’t have to rip up the floor boards, he could have phoned me, all of your news desks have my number, or a blagger could have got my number for you, and I could have told you that phone hacking was going on at the Mirror for many, many years,” he said to Grigson who fielded his questions on behalf of the company board. “You are not being straight with your shareholders here.” In March, lawyers for celebrities suing the newspaper group for damages claimed that the titles indulged in “industrial scale” hacking despite repeated corporate denials. With a potential compensation fund of £12m set aside earlier this year, a verdict on the level of damages claimed by eight phone-hacking victims, including Paul Gascoigne and Sadie Frost, is expected in the coming months. Grigson defended the company’s behaviour since his arrival as chairman of the company that runs the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People. When Grigson said: “We’ve never denied phone hacking,” Johnson jumped in to say, “That’s a lie.” “I am being absolutely straight,” said Grigson. “Throughout 2013 when I was chairman for the first year and [chief executive] Simon [Fox] arrived in late 2012 and throughout 2014 we conducted exactly what I said last year – very thorough investigations”. Grigson indicated that the turning point in the company’s investigation came when ex-Sunday Mirror journalist Dan Evans pleaded guilty to phone hacking in January 2014. The company’s investigation had been led by former legal director Paul Vickers, who left Trinity Mirror in January. “The one thing we didn’t have until Dan Evans went to trial … was a list of telephone numbers of people who claimed that their phones were hacked,” he said. “Once we had telephone numbers to check against we conducted massive amounts of investigation. On the basis of those investigations earlier this year we admitted guilt to those people whose phones were hacked. We paid compensation to a number of people, there are other claims in the pipeline we are dealing with.” At the annual meeting, Johnson questioned whether Grigson was being disingenuous about the scale of the financial threat to the company with up to 100 alleged victims understood to be poised to sue. “You continue to deny that there are potentially hundreds of claims against your company,” he said. Grigson said that the job of the board was to focus on facts and not work “entirely and utterly on speculation”. “There are potentially more claims, completely agree with that,” he said. “All we can ever do is make provisions on what is in front of us and what we know. That’s what we’ve done. Other people have speculated large numbers. We have no basis for understanding where those numbers are coming from. My job is not to stand up here or manage this board and work entirely an utterly on speculation. Our job is to deal what is in front of us factually and get on with it and run the company in the best interests of all the people.” David Seymour, a shareholder and former Trinity Mirror employee, asked why the company had ended out in the high court instead of settling in the manner News UK has done with claims. Grigson said the company was forced to do so after making what it felt was fair compensation offers that were rejected by the eight claimants. “We would [like to] have avoided going to court,” he said. “Not just because of the publicity but because if we had avoided going to court it means we would have found some way of agreeing the right levels of compensation. We offered what we thought were very fair amounts based on the individuals involved. Our priority is not to avoid paying people damages … our priority is to pay the right amount. I think people just wanted their time in court perhaps.” |