Europe

Europe

Another top U.K. police official resigns over hacking scandal

18 July 2011 20:27 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates resigned on Monday, a day after his boss stepped down over a phone hacking scandal, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.

Yates, who is the country’s top anti-terrorism official, tendered his resignation after learning that he would be sacked over his 2009 decision not to reopen an earlier investigation into reported phone-hacking.

"Assistant commissioner John Yates has this afternoon indicated his intention to resign to the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). This has been accepted," Scotland Yard said in a statement on Monday.

The highest-ranking casualty of the phone-hacking scandal so far is Paul Stephenson, who resigned as chief of the Metropolitan police service over links with Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of News of the World. Wallis was hired to advise the Metropolitan Police in 2009.

London Mayor Boris Johnson said Yates’ resignation was "regrettable," but "the right call."

"There is absolutely nothing proven against the probity or the professionalism of either man," he said. "But in both cases we have to recognize that the nexus of questions about the relationship between the Met and the News of the World was likely to be distracting to both officers in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games."

Yates will be replaced by another assistant commissioner, 51-year-old Cressida Dick. Stephenson’s successor is yet unknown.

News Corporation has come under intense criticism by politicians in Britain after it emerged that some newspaper journalists employed by the group had written stories based on material hacked from phone messages, including those belonging to crime victims, celebrities and politicians.