英伦广角 2009-07-12 新闻集团被指控非法窃听名流（在线收听）

Actors, politicians, sports stars and other celebrities are thought to be considering suing the News of the World for hacking into their mobile phones. Legal action could amount to millions of pounds in damages, Mark Steven represents two who believe they were targeted.

“I think people are going to be looking for settlements with a significant amount of money, we’ve seen with the Max Mosley case that invasion of privacy, now attracting significant amounts of money in terms of damages. And so once you add legal cost to that ,we are gonna be talking in the couple of hundred thousand per person making a claim, and that’s going to be a large amount of money. ”

Two football legends, Sir Alex Ferguson and  Alan Shearer , are the latest said to have been bugged in messages left with Gordon Taylor, the Players' Union Boss, He was paid 700,000 pounds by the paper in the secret civil case settlement. Dozens more victims who sue successfully could cost the paper owners ,News International, much more.

The Guardian Newspaper claimed evidence of widespread hacking was uncovered during the case of News of the World, the royal editor Clive Goodman, he was jailed with a private investigator two years ago. The director of public prosecutions is reviewing the police evidence that didn’t lead to charges against other staff of the paper.

The police have ruled out reopening the Clive Goodman case, but they are two new investigations by MPs' Committee and the Press Complaints Commission, they are asking once again who else knew what Clive Goodman was up to.

Did Andy Coulson know? he was Clive Goodman’s editor, he said he didn’t, but he took responsibility and quit. He’s now the Tory Party’s chief media advisor. The Lib Dem Chris Huhne accused Scotland Yard of neglect of duty in ruling out too quickly a reopening of the case. He is asking the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate .

“Given the scale and scope of the allegations,” he said. “the possibility that other journalists and investigators were involved must now be seriously considered.”

But News International strongly denied any other journalists had acted illegally, in a letter to the MPs' Media Watchdog Committee,the company’s new chief executive Rebecca Wade wrote:“the Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public. ”.The company insisted that it and its staff would be exonerated by any new investigation.