British police investigating allegations of bribery of public officials by the media have arrested a serving prison officer, Scotland Yard said Monday.
The 40-year-old man was held early Monday at his home in the Kent town of Sittingbourne in southeast England, on suspicion of conspiracy to cause misconduct in a public office.
“He is being interviewed at a Kent police station and a search of his property is being conducted,” a spokesman for London’s Metropolitan Police said.
The arrest was part of Operation Elveden, Scotland Yard’s investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials.
It brings to 58 the total number of people held under the inquiry, which is one of three set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid.
Charges have previously been brought against former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications director Andy Coulson.
Virginia Wheeler, a journalist from Murdoch’s The Sun tabloid, and former policeman Paul Flattley will also face criminal charges over alleged corrupt payments for information, prosecutors said last week.
The first person to be prosecuted as part of the investigation, a counter-terrorism detective, was found guilty earlier this month of trying to sell information about a phone hacking investigation to a newspaper.
A jury convicted Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn of offering the News of the World information about a probe into whether Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the illegal hacking of mobile phones should be reopened.
She will be sentenced on February 1.
Murdoch shut down the News of the World in July 2011 when it emerged that the paper had hacked the voicemail of a schoolgirl who was later found dead.
Prison officer arrested in UK corruption probe
