Phone hacking scandal costs Murdoch £79 million

The phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper wing has already cost him more than £79 million ($125 million, 96 million euros), company figures showed on Thursday. Revelations that the News of the World illegally accessed the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl, as well as dozens of celebrities, politicians and crime victims, forced Murdoch to close the Sunday tabloid last July. News Group Newspapers (NGN), the subsidiary of Murdoch's British newspaper wing News International, has set aside £55.5 million for costs relating to the shutdown, according to company. A further £23.7 million has been set aside for phone hacking claimants' damages and legal fees. News International has settled with dozens of victims, including British actor Jude Law, footballer Ashley Cole and former deputy prime minister John Prescott. The company report noted that the final cost of settling civil claims "may or may not be significantly higher". NGN has also taken a £160 million accounting write-off to cover the loss of publishing rights for the 168-year-old News of the World. The News of the World's sister paper, The Sun, launched a new Sunday edition in February. Separate figures revealed that Times Newspapers, which publishes Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times broadsheets, reduced pre-tax losses to £11.6 million from £45 million the previous year.