Phone-hacking scandal: Stuart Kuttner is latest NoW exec to be arrested

Former managing editor and one-time public face of the News of the World taken into custod

• Amelia Hill
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 August 2011 14.27 BST
• 

  Stuart Kuttner (left) with Sara and Michael Payne during the Sarah's Law campaign. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

  Stuart Kuttner, the public face of the News of the World and its most vocal public defender for 22 years, has been arrested by police investigating allegations of phone hacking and of bribing police officers to leak sensitive information.

  As managing editor until his resignation in July 2009, Kuttner was in charge of finances at the now-defunct tabloid.

  Kuttner, 71, was described at the time of his resignation by the last editor of the newspaper, Colin Myler, as a man whose "DNA is absolutely integrated into the newspaper which he has represented across the media with vigour".

  Kuttner reportedly did not know he was going to be taken into custody when he arrived by appointment at a police station in London on Tuesday at 11am for questioning over the phone-hacking scandal.

  Police from both Operation Weeting (the investigation into phone hacking) and Elveden (the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police), are understood to have arrested Kuttner, who is suffering serious health problems and recently returned from treatment in the US.

  Kuttner is believed to have been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to section 1 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977, and on suspicion of corruption contrary to section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.

  They are the same allegations that Rebekah Brooks, the former News of the World editor and ex-News International chief executive, faces since her arrest last month.

  When Brooks faced a Commons culture, media and sport select committee hearing last month she told MPs that payments to private investigators were the responsibility of the paper's managing editor's office.

  Brooks admitted using private investigators during her time as editor of the tabloid between 2000 and 2003 for, she claimed, "purely legitimate" purposes.

  When asked whether she had ever discussed individual payments to private investigators with Kuttner, she admitted that "payments to private investigators would have gone through the managing editor's office". But, she added: "I can't remember if we ever discussed individual payments."

  Kuttner's role as the public face of the News of the World proved to be key to the tabloid under the editors, Rebekah Brooks – then Rebekah Wade – and her replacement, Andy Coulson, both of whom were reluctant to talk to the media.

  When Brooks's "Sarah's Law" campaign caused public hysteria in some towns and cities across the UK, prompting some Portsmouth residents to burn the homes of suspected paedophiles, it was Kuttner who faced the cameras.

   

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  http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/02/phone-hacking-stuart-ku...