(Reuters) -
A technology firm has told British legislators it was aware of the deletion of
hundreds of thousands of emails at the request of News Corp unit News
International between April 2010 and last month, parliamentarian Keith Vaz said
on Monday.
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"I am
most surprised by the contents of the letter sent on behalf of HCL," Vaz
told Reuters. "The fact that so many emails have been deleted at the
request of News International raises a number of further questions which we
will continue to probe."
British
police are investigating the extent of phone-hacking at the now defunct News of
the World Sunday tabloid which was owned by News International, the British
newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
The paper
had long maintained that illegally hacking into the voicemails of celebrities
and members of the royal family had been confined to one "rogue
reporter" who was jailed for four months in 2007.
But police
now have a list of 4,000 possible targets including a missing schoolgirl, later
found murdered, and families of victims of the 2005 London bombings, as well as
politicians and celebrities.
Last month,
senior police officers appeared before Vaz's committee and said News
International had tried to "thwart" an original inquiry into phone
hacking at the paper five years ago.
HCL told
the committee in its letter that it had been involved in nine separate episodes
of email deletion but did not know of anything untoward behind the deletion
requests.
HCL says it
is not the company responsible for emails on the News International system that
are older than a couple of weeks. It says another unnamed vendor is
responsible, but confirms it has co-operated with this vendor in deleting
material.
It said
that since it was not the company that stored News International's data
"any suggestion or allegation that it has deleted material held on behalf
of News International is without foundation."
News
International said in a statement it had been actively working since January
with the police on email data and other computer information which may be
relevant to their inquiry.
"NI
keeps backups of its core systems and, in close co-operation with the
(police's) Operation Weeting team, has been working to restore these
backups," the company said.
(Additional
reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; Editing by Jon Hemming)
 |
The firm
contracted to manage News International's email
system says it was asked to make mass deletions nine times since May 2010. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA |
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