Paul Salfarlie witnessed an IT manager swapping the hard drive of a senior News International Executive “so the police couldn’t get their hands on it”
By Rachel Wright
It was April 2011 and Paul Salfarlie had just started a 12-hour night shift on the concierge desk of the News International building at the Thomas More Square site. Arrests had been made as part of Operation Weeting (the Met police’s investigation into phone-hacking) and everyone in the building was on edge.
A man from IT walked up to reception and asked to be taken into the building – it was ‘after hours’ so he needed to be escorted by security. Paul recognised him as a fairly senior figure so he was happy to comply. They went up to the 10th floor – where the News International Executives had their offices. The IT manager asked to be let into one of the offices.
“I escorted the IT Manager into one of the Director’s offices, he replaced a hard drive and tower from that office and I escorted him out of the office, closing the door behind and as we were approaching the lift, he said to me the Director would be glad that he’d removed that hard drive for me and he would be glad that the police would not get their hands on it.”
Paul realised the significance of what the IT guy had said – that he was being asked to collude in a criminal act and he wasn’t happy about it. So, he reported it to his manager. The manager’s response was not reassuring, as Paul recounts.
“He spoke to the owner of the security company and told me that I should keep quiet about it. I sent another email saying that I wasn’t comfortable with that and that I had a clean record and was looking at becoming a Canadian citizen and I didn’t want to have my record blemished in any way and if there were any illegal activities going on I didn’t want to be a part of it.”
Paul was furious that none of the managers even bothered to ask him about the details of that night – details that Paul had meticulously recorded, as he was expected to do in the course of his work. He believed they just wanted to brush it under the carpet because “of everything that was happening.” Revelations by the Guardian newspaper of the paper’s phone – hacking activities were dominating the airwaves – the News of the World had been accused of illegally intercepting voicemails on the phones of many thousands of people including celebrities, politicians, the Royal Family and ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.
Paul Salfarlie felt that his bosses were putting pressure on him to protect staff from the prying eyes of the authorities.
“Even we were told that if any police were to come into the building, we were told to notify our manager straight away and not to let the police in. And I know that we can’t stop the police – they are allowed to come in.”
Then the story broke in the national media that an investigator from the News of the World had hacked into the phone of the murdered school girl – Millie Dowler – when she was still missing nearly ten years previously. The ensuing wave of revulsion at the paper’s tactics meant that pressure was really piling up on the employees at the News International building.
With advertising revenue plummeting Rupert Murdoch decided to close the News of the World after 168 years in print. It was July 2011.
Just days before the closure, Paul remembers that he and a colleague, were asked to go into the offices to empty the desks of personal items and take photographs of them. His colleague told him that the boss of the security company, had emptied the drawers of all paperwork, taken them home and burned them in a pit in his garden. The next day the boss called Paul.
“He said, do you remember when we went onto News International’s floor and we took all the paperwork and personal items out and put them on the desk?
I said, ‘hold on a minute, no YOU took the paperwork out because I only took the personal items out, and he said oh OK and put the phone down on me. And I believe he was trying to use me as an alibi to say that we all took paperwork out of the desk and took photographs and whatever he took away we knew about – but I knew nothing of that. He did that by himself.”
Paul says he was subjected to bullying and harassment – mostly from the owner of the security company. He even wrote a personal email to Rebekah Brookes – who at the time was the CEO of News International – who he said he got on well with. But he never heard back from her.
One day when he was on the 11th floor where all the News International Executives sat, Paul noticed a poster advertising an alert line – a kind of whistle-blowers information pack of who to contact if an employee had information about wrong-doing in the company. So, Paul wrote an email, complaining about the treatment he was receiving and his discomfort with the illegal activities he had witnessed – ie the destruction of the computer hard-drive and the boss of the company’s efforts to get him to give him an alibi.
Around this time, Paul was removed from the site of News International pending an enquiry into what his bosses were alleging was ‘fraudulent and illegal activity”.
He was very surprised to receive a summons from the HR department back at News International to come back to the building for a meeting. Surprised because he was not allowed on the site but also surprised because he had complained as a whistle-blower to a special line and he and his action were protected by law. The HR department were pretty much the last department that should have been involved – as they were responsible for hiring, firing or demoting him.
“So, I went to HR and they asked me what I knew about illegal activities and I said I wanted to speak about the bullying and harassment which affected me. Once again they asked me about illegal activities that I was aware of and it was clear to me that they weren’t interested in anything I had to say but only in any information that I had that would help protect News International and nothing to protect me.”
Paul realised that not only were his interests not being protected but now he had been exposed to everyone in the company as a whistle-blower – which to his colleagues and bosses would surely indicate that he was not to be trusted. He repeatedly asked to have a fair hearing to discuss the issues that he had raised and the disciplinary charges against him.
“There was never a meeting, hearing, I was never vindicated, I was ostracised, demoted, all chances of prospects were gone. It affected me and I had a lot of problems with managers – I had about 9 disciplinaries and I also put in grievances against various managers. And all I wanted was an apology and to be vindicated of anything I had done wrong – because all I did was to brought up what I thought was important information to my manager and the head of the company I was working for and because of it I felt that I was treated very unfairly.”
But Paul has not let his experience get him down. He still works for the same company as before but on a different site with different bosses. He says he is happy to be a witness in any proceedings against the people who he saw destroying evidence.
