PROSECUTORS CLAIM EX-NEWS EXEC HID INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE

Rebekah Brooks, the former CEO of News International, rushed to remove incriminating evidence from her two homes in England and the offices of the company in London as a “media firestorm” developed in 2011 over allegations that reporters working for one of NI’s publications, the now-defunct News of the World had hacked the telephones of numerous show-biz celebrities and other public figures, a prosecutor alleged at her trial in London today (Monday). Prosecutor Andrew Edis claimed that the effort to hide evidence that executives of NI were aware of the hacking began the day after the company announced it was shutting down News of the World when former editor Andy Coulson was arrested. At that time, Edis alleged, Brooks sent her personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, along with Gary Keegan the husband of Brooks’s other PA, and Brooks’s son Nick to the company’s headquarters where they retrieved seven boxes of notepads and took them to Carter’s home. They have since vanished.