Tom Crone, the legal manager at the Rupert Murdoch U.K. newspaper arm fighting widespread hacking allegations, has left the company, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday.
Crone had been with News International for 26 years. He had oversight for all legal matters for the Sun and the News of the World for editorial. Spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined to say if Crone had resigned or been told to leave.
News Corp. closed the News of the World tabloid last Sunday at the heart of the hacking scandal and is currently helping police with further inquiries.
The fallout from a phone hacking and police bribery scandal at Murdoch's U.K. newspapers roiled unabated across Britain's political landscape Wednesday and grew near to striking its hardest blow yet at the media baron's global empire.
U.K. lawmakers were poised to demand that Rupert Murdoch give up his goal of taking over British Sky Broadcasting, a lucrative U.K. broadcaster.
"There is a firestorm, if you like, that is engulfing parts of the media, parts of the police, and indeed our political system's ability to respond," British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a speech in the House of Commons. He said the focus must now be on the victims, and make sure that the guilty are prosecuted.
Cameron also vowed to look into whether 9/11 victims were targeted in Britain's phone hacking scandal, as
The Daily Mirror newspaper had claimed that some journalists had approached a private investigator in the U.S. to try to access the phone data of some of the victims of 9/11. Cameron told lawmakers Wednesday that he will look into the claims.
In an about-face, Cameron has put his party's weight behind an opposition Labour Party motion up for a vote Wednesday that declares that Murdoch's News Corp.'s bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting would not be in the national interest.
The motion doesn't carry legal force, but with the three main parties in support, it looms as a powerful expression of the tide running against Murdoch's newspapers.
Murdoch's hope to gain control of the 61 percent of BSkyB shares that his News Corp. doesn't yet own has already been delayed for several months while the British government's Competition Commission reviews monopoly concerns.
In other news, Murdoch's Australian media company said Wednesday it will conduct a "thorough review" of all editorial expenditures over the past three years to confirm that payments were made for legitimate services.