Ex-soldier given conditional caution for press leak was paid £500 for story
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Version 0 of 1. A former soldier who was told he could pay £150 to a charity and escape a trial over a leak to a newspaper received £500 for the story, it has emerged. The Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to issue him with a conditional caution comes a year after a former Sun journalist was charged over an alleged one-off payment of less than that in relation to the death of a prison inmate. The journalist is facing a crown court trial next year and possible jail. He is one of 23 journalists, mostly from the Sun newspaper, facing trial at the Old Bailey in the coming year. Another journalist is facing trial over an allegation of a one-off corrupt payments to a public official of £500, relating to Scotland Yard’s Operation Elveden investigation into unlawful payments to public officials. The CPS refused to divulge the name of the former soldier, but confirmed that he had sold a story for £500. A CPS spokeswoman denied it was operating on double standards or that it had reviewed its charging policy over Elveden files received from the police. “We are considering cases according to the same policies,” said the spokeswoman. “We must look at every case individually and on its own merits, not in any way in the context of other cases. All cases are different, and no cases can be compared like that.” The CPS said the incident with the former soldier happened in 2001 and that the story sold concerned alleged drug-taking by a number of serving army personnel that year. In a statement it said that “all the circumstances were considered” including the fact that admissions were made at the first opportunity and there was no evidence that the leak as “part of a course of conduct”. It said it also took into account that the newspaper could have obtained the information “by lawful means” and the disclosure “did not reveal a systemic failure on the part of the MoD who were already dealing with the matter” of drug-taking. One of the journalists facing trial described the CPS’s decision as “ludicrous”. Another said it was “the rules of the mad house”. A dozen public officials, including police officers and prison staff, have already been sentenced over payments for stories from newspapers as part of Operation Elveden. A friend of a defendant awaiting trial said: “This is just absolutely astonishing. On the one hand journalists accused of a similar offence have been put through the torture of one, two or almost three years on bail. Some are facing crown court trials with legal bills running into six figures. “I’m happy for the guy, I am, but it doesn’t seem fair that the CPS now thinks this matter can be dealt with a £150 payment to charity.” |