London: In an early morning swoop, a man and a woman were arrested here on Tuesday by Scotland Yard probing alleged corrupt payments made by journalists linked to the phone-hacking scandal to police and public officials.
The 50-year-old man is an employee of Revenue and Customs and has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, and on suspicion of corruption.
The woman, who is 43, was addressed at the same address on suspicion of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office and for alleged money-laundering offences.
The pair were arrested at around 6:00 am by officers working for Operation Elveden. They are being questioned in a central London police station.
Operation Elveden was launched after police were handed documents in June 2010, suggesting News International journalists had made illegal payments to police and government officers.
The arrests follow information provided to police by News Corporation`s management standards committee (MSC).
It brings the total number of arrests in this investigation to 29, the BBC reported.
Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch`s British newspaper wing News International, on Tuesday became one of the first people to be charged under the linked probe.
The MSC was set up in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of media baron Rupert Murdoch`s News of the World tabloid in July 2011.
The MSC is carrying out internal investigations relating to Murdoch`s remaining UK papers the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times and is working closely with the detectives investigating alleged phone hacking and corrupt payments to police and other public officials.
Earlier in May Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman and chief executive, told staff in an email that the MSC had completed its internal review and given the News International titles a largely clean bill of health.
Murdoch said that the review of the Times and Sunday Times had found no evidence of illegal conduct other than a single incident reported months ago.
In a statement, Scotland Yard said: "[The arrests] relate to suspected payments to a public official and are not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately."
PTI
