Two former top News Corp. executives, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, will face charges in connection to bribing police and public officials, the Crown Prosecution Service said Tuesday.
Brooks, the former head of News International, and Coulson, the former editor of The News of the World, have found themselves ensnared in a phone hacking scandal that engulfed News Corp.'s U.K. tabloids last year. They also face charges stemming from those illegal news-gathering practices.
In addition to Brooks and Coulson, journalists Clive Goodman and John Kay and Ministry of Defence employee Bettina Jordan-Barber also face charges, prosecutors said.
Goodman and Coulson will be charged with two counts of conspiracy related to allegations that they paid public officials for information, according to the prosecutors. The information included a palace phone directory known as the "Green Book" that contained contact details for the British Royal Family.
Brooks, Jordan-Barber and Kay will be charged with one count of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office, prosecutors said. The charge relates to information allegedly provided by Jordan-Barber in exchange for £100,000. The information appeared in a series of news stories published by The Sun, a News Corp.-owned tabloid.
