| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:54 am Post subject: |
| Blair's office denies leaking e-mail
By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer
Mon Mar 5, 9:28 PM ET
Prime Minister Tony Blair's office denied Monday that it had leaked information relating to an investigation into alleged corruption in the political honors system.
Blair's official spokesman issued the denial after Britain's attorney general won an injunction Friday prohibiting the British Broadcasting Corp. from publishing details of an e-mail exchange between two of Blair's closest aides.
On Monday, the injunction was relaxed to allow the naming of the aides involved. The BBC said the e-mail was sent by senior Blair adviser Ruth Turner to the prime minister's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
The BBC said the e-mail concerned Lord Levy, the prime minister's Middle East envoy and fundraiser. It was barred from revealing further details of its contents.
Levy and Turner are among four people arrested in connection with a Metropolitan Police investigation into claims that honors — including seats in the House of Lords and knighthoods — were given in exchange for loans to the Labour or Conservative parties. All four have been questioned but not charged.
Any suggestions of the e-mail being leaked from Blair's Downing Street office were "just plain wrong," said the prime minister's official spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
The statements came in response to speculation that someone in Blair's office leaked the document in an effort to create publicity that could undermine any potential effort to prosecute.
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement there were concerns that disclosure of information would impede the investigation, and that Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith was acting "completely independently of government and in his independent public interest capacity."
The BBC said in a statement that its report was a "legitimate matter of public interest." | |  | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk | 
