Andy Coulson, the former David Cameron communications aide arrested in connection with the News of the World hacking scandal earlier this summer, continued to draw payment from Rupert Murdoch’s empire after starting work for the current U.K. prime minister. The BBC reports that Coulson, who became the Conservative Party’s director of communications in May 2007, took in “several hundred thousand pounds” during the latter half of that year as part of a News Corp. severance package. He also may have kept his health-care benefits, along with a company car, for an additional three years.
This revelation is just the latest headache for Cameron, who has already had trouble explaining how he came to hire Coulson as a media adviser a mere four months after he gave up his editorship at NotW over the earliest hacking allegations. (Coulson left the administration in January 2011.) In keeping with a major theme of the News Corp. scandal, the prime minister’s people are claiming they were “not aware” of their old employee’s lingering relationship with News Corp., with whom he dealt regularly on behalf of Cameron.
Coulson got hundreds of thousands of pounds from News Int [BBC News]
Previously: New Evidence of Cover-up in Murdoch Hacking Scandal
