After 4 years, UK drops legal action on hacking

Prosecutors announced Friday they would take no further action in Britain’s mammoth phone-hacking probe, ending a four-year investigation that rocked the political and media establishment to the core.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it would take no further action against News Group Newspapers, global media baron Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid stable.

England’s state prosecutors also said there would be no further action against 10 journalists from the rival Mirror Group Newspapers — among them former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

The phone hacking scandal, which first emerged in 2006 and resurfaced explosively in 2011, engulfed top newspaper executives, police chiefs and politicians.

The probes into voicemail interception and other alleged media crimes amounted to the biggest police investigation in British history.

The scandal led to the demise of the expose-led News of the World weekly tabloid, which was Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper.

Several journalists from Murdoch’s publications have been individually convicted of voicemail interception offences.

But since July, the CPS was also considering whether to prosecute NGN as a whole for corporate liability.

But Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, announced the CPS was dropping both probes.

“We have decided there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction and therefore no further action will be taken in any of these cases,” she said.