Hacking investigation took four years and cost £2.5m – but ended without any prosecutions

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-investigation-took-four-years-and-cost-25m--but-ended-without-any-prosecutions-10493775.html

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A £2.5m Scotland Yard investigation into computer hacking has ended after four years without anybody facing court because the alleged offences happened too long ago, prosecutors have confirmed.

Operation Kalmyk – an investigation sparked by a Panorama exposé into the alleged illegal accessing of a former army intelligence officer’s computer – led to the arrests of 15 people, including the former News of the World journalist Alex Marunchak and private investigator Philip Campbell Smith. Another seven people were arrested under caution.

The BBC programme broadcast allegations in 2011 that the computer of spy Ian Hurst was planted with a so-called Trojan virus in 2006 that copied emails, as part of a commission from the News of the World and Marunchak. The journalist denied knowledge of the operation.

Among the downloaded material were messages relating to a top-level IRA agent, Freddie Scappaticci or “Stakeknife”, who was run by Mr Hurst’s unit and regarded as being at high risk of assassination. Detectives took 560 statements and recovered more than 1,500 exhibits as part of the inquiry. It identified 13 potential victims, including corporate businesses, over a period of more than two years from 2005.

But the force has faced questions about the scale of its operation after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that nobody could be prosecuted based on the charges it was considering. The alleged offences were said to have been committed between 2005 and 2007, when the law included a six-month time limit for starting a prosecution.

Campbell Smith, the man at the centre of the hacking allegations, was jailed for eight months in 2012 on a separate matter after admitting using the services of a specialist blagger to trick banks and phone companies into revealing confidential information.

Marunchak, 64, told the Press Gazette: “The whole thing has collapsed like a pack of cards after three years of waiting. The strain on my family has been enormous.”

Mr Hurst told The Independent he was suing the publisher of the News of the World but that questions had to be asked about the time and money spent on the inquiry without anyone being prosecuted.

Scotland Yard said: “We respect the CPS’s decision and recognise that in this case there were complex legal and evidential issues that meant there could not be a realistic prospect of conviction.”