The executive editor of UK News Corp-owned newspaper The Sun, Fergus Shanahan, was charged in the UK police’s investigation into bribery for “an offence of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office,” according to a statement from the UK Crown Prosecution Service.
The UK investigation Operation Elveden is examining “the unlawful provision of information by public officials to journalists,” the Crown Prosecution Service’s website states.
Shanahan is charged with letting a journalist pay-for-play — or pay a public official more than $10,000 for information, the Associated Press reported. Payments were made in August 2006 and August 2007, the prosecution claim. According to the Independent, the public official is unnamed.
The Crown Prosecution Service noted that when deciding if it would charge Shanahan, it had “to consider whether the public interest served by the conduct in question outweighs the overall criminality before bringing criminal proceedings.”
iMediaEthics wrote earlier this month about the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to charge Sun deputy editor Geoff Webster under Operation Elveden.