(AFP) Posted Tuesday September 13,
2011– 9:45am
A group of US investors added fresh charges on Tuesday to a lawsuit alleging mismanagement at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
Two
pension funds and New York-based Amalgamated Bank, which manages about
$12 billion for institutional investors, accused News Corp. chief
executive Murdoch of "a long history of abuses" in the original lawsuit
filed in March.
They filed an amended complaint with the Delaware
court hearing the case in July to include Britain's phone-hacking
scandal and submitted another amended complaint on Tuesday to include
alleged abuses at News Corp.'s US units.
"The revelations
surrounding News Corp.'s corporate governance lapses get worse with each
new disclosure," Jay Eisenhofer, a lawyer for the shareholders, said in
a statement.
"Our new complaint shows that the illicit phone
hacking and subsequent cover-ups at News of the World were part of a
much broader, historic pattern of corruption at News Corp., under the
acquiescence of a board that was fully aware of the wrongdoing, if not
directly complicit in the actions," he said.
The lawsuit was
originally filed to challenge News Corp.'s $675-million acquisition of
Shine, a television and film production company run by Murdoch's
daughter Elisabeth.
The lawsuit denounced the deal as part of a
pattern of "rampant nepotism," stating: "Throughout his tenure, Murdoch
has treated News Corp like a family candy jar, which he raids whenever
his appetite strikes."
Australian-born Murdoch, now a US citizen,
has built News Corp. into a global media and entertainment empire which
spans newspapers, television and Hollywood movies and wields immense
political influence.
The group shut down the News of the World,
one of Britain's most powerful newspapers, in response to a slew of
accusations involving phone tapping, payments to police and other
questionable behavior in covering the news.
The latest amended
complaint alleges "widespread misconduct at several of (News Corp.'s) US
subsidiaries" -- consumer marketing unit News America Marketing and
smart card unit NDS Group.
The complaint said the subsidiaries
have been "accused by multiple parties of stealing computer technology,
hacking into business plans and computers and violating the law through a
wide range of anti-competitive behavior."
The complaint cited
nearly $1 billion in verdicts and settlements by News America Marketing
and accusations that NDS had illegally extracted software code from
competitors' cards and posted it online, allowing hackers to create
counterfeit cards.
Copyright © 2011 AFP
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