LONDON – Prince Harry’s lawyers and prominent British politicians were charged Monday Washington Post managing director and publisher Will Lewis of having fabricated a story 13 years ago to protect evidence from police about possible wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.

In court, the lawyers filed a statement alleging that Lewis “fabricated a false security threat” in January 2011 to justify the deletion of millions of emails from early 2008 to late 2010 — an act that those suing the company suggest is part of a broader cover.

The Murdoch newspaper company, now called News UK, denies these claims. Lewis has largely denied wrongdoing but declined to comment to NPR Monday.

The Murdochs have paid more than $1.5 billion to settle scores of lawsuits since a simmering phone-hacking scandal erupted into a full-blown crisis in the summer of 2011.

The people targeted by the tabloids include crime victims, sports figures, celebrities, royalty and politicians – some of whom now claim the Murdoch company invaded their privacy not just in pursuit of headlines but as part of corporate espionage. News UK denies this, noting that it is an allegation made in pursuit of their lawsuits against the company. Lewis is not charged in the cases.

Accusing two politicians of trying to steal corporate emails

In July 2011, when police first learned of the deleted emails, Lewis explained that Murdoch’s company had to get rid of them because of a tip he and a senior executive received almost six months earlier: an “outside source” told for them that former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown conspired with a News UK employee and another person to steal the CEO’s emails. The unnamed person was said to be Tom Watson, then a leading MP and critic of the Murdochs. The IT person was later alleged to have been a former employee of News UK.

Brown has condemned the claim as false and outrageous. He has asked Scotland Yard for a criminal investigation into the episode involving Lewis. Watson, who is among scores of litigants suing News UK alleging unlawful invasion of privacy, has denied that. In court, the lead trial attorney for Watson, Harry and the others called the story “a ruse.”

In a statement to NPR, News UK said it had responded to a real concern: Someone was trying to steal the emails of its chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. The company said it did not justify deleting the emails based on the suspected security breach. It said it did not disclose the alleged breach to police earlier because it commissioned an outside consultant to carry out “forensic checks” and found no evidence of tampering.

“(News UK) had received information that there was a direct threat that a current or former employee was actively trying to sell data belonging to (the company),” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “The information indicated that the threat was to Mrs Brooks’ data and involved a level of technical detail which made it more serious and credible. These factors contributed to the decision to ensure that multiple copies of confidential (News UK) data would not be kept on the various systems operated by the company at the time. To do so in systems with weak controls, including (News UK’s) old and unstable email archive system, would have increased the risk of data loss and would have been poor practice.”

So far, News UK has produced no evidence to substantiate the concerns or to shed light on the source. Lewis later went on to become publisher and chief executive of Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal in the United States for six years.

Intense scrutiny of Lewis’ journalistic past has cast a pall over his short tenure as leader Postas well as revelations which he pressed NPR and his own former top editor for not covering developments in the ongoing hacking cases. Lewis has put half a dozen former colleagues in prominent positions on Post. His appointed to be executive editor of Post, Deputy Telegraph Editor Robert Winnettwithdrew before making his way to Washington.

Tasked with assisting police investigations

Lewis joined News UK in September 2010. Early the next year, he became one of a handful of corporate executives accused of handling the escalating scandal over its tabloids’ hacking of mobile phone voicemails and otherwise illegally obtaining confidential information about the subjects of their reporting.

As an investigative journalist Nick Davies has writtenMurdoch met with Brooks in London during the day on 24 January. That evening, News UK’s chief technical officer, Paul Cheesbrough, emailed Brooks, saying that he and Lewis had just learned of the apparent scheme involving Brown that very day. Lewis was copied on the email, which was presented in court on Monday.

“He didn’t provide us with any additional details,” Cheesbrough said of the person who gave him the alert, “other than that his informant was a trusted police source and suggested that the source had been in a recent conversation” with Watson.

If invented, the accusation involving Brown and Watson represented a bold act of jujitsu. Both men say they were victims of the Murdoch tabloids’ phone hacking, although Brown has not sued and that claim has not been tested.

In early February 2011, Lewis sent an email to Cheesbrough saying a “green light” had been given by a corporate lawyer for “email migration”. Mass deletions soon followed, although News UK was under investigation by the police and had been told to preserve all such material. Brooks’ computer files were also kept from Scotland Yard.

Cheesbrough is now a top executive in New York City for Murdoch’s Fox Corp. A spokesman for Fox Corp. deferred comment to News UK.

Accused of corporate espionage to protect a deal

Both Watson and former business secretary Vince Cable accuse News UK of unlawfully invading their privacy to promote corporate interests. News UK denies this.

Watson was a leading critic of the Murdoch press. Cable, known to be skeptical of Murdoch, had to decide whether the Murdochs could take full control of broadcasting giant Sky. They claim News UK hacked government officials to learn their political strategies, to intimidate Watson from criticizing them during ongoing parliamentary inquiries and to seek intelligence about what Cable was doing about Sky.

Their trial lawyer, David Sherborne, also accused Lewis of violating Cable’s privacy by leaking audiotaped private comments secretly recorded by journalists for the rival. Telegraphwhich Lewis used to manage as editor.

The audio was posted publicly, not by Telegraph but by Robert Peston, a leading BBC journalist at the time, who was a close friend of Lewis.

Lewis has repeatedly declined to comment on whether he was the source of the audio, including in the face of a legal investigation.

The release of the audio – in which Cable said he had “declared war” on Murdoch – caused a swift backlash. He was removed from reviewing the Sky deal, worth $15 billion. The job was handed to a minister seen as a friend of Rupert Murdoch’s son James, who was overseeing his British holdings at the time. News UK denies that Lewis leaked the video to pressure Cable out of its regulatory role.

When public outrage erupted over the hacking scandal in July 2011, the Murdochs shut down their Sunday tabloid News of the World and withdrew his bid to take over all of Sky. Years later, after yet another effort failed, they sold their 40 percent stake to Comcast.

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