Scotland Yard probes phone hacking at Sunday Mirror

Scotland Yard has launched a probe into Britain’s Sunday Mirror newspaper over allegations that its former employees indulged in phone hacking, accessing voicemail messages of celebrities.

The investigation is focused on the Trinity Mirror Group subsidiary, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) Ltd, publisher of the group’s five national newspapers.

The celebrity-heavy Sunday Mirror has a circulation of over one million and is the weekly sister newspaper of the Daily Mirror tabloid.

A spokesperson confirmed that MGN ‘has been notified by the Metropolitan Police that they are at a very early stage in investigating whether MGN is criminally liable for alleged unlawful conduct by previous employees in relation to phone hacking on the Sunday Mirror.

The development is the first formal confirmation that a newspaper group is being investigated as a corporate suspect for alleged phone hacking by its former journalists. It was reported last month that Rupert Murdoch’s News International, a rival of the Sunday Mirror, was placed under investigation, but the Met Police is yet to confirm that claim.