England’s Central Criminal Court has learned that News of the World, the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper — which closed after revelations of a phone hacking scandal — kept a “legendary safe” where “all sorts of stories [about rich and famous people] were buried.”

The Guardian reports:

Former News of the World reporter Dan Evans claimed at the phone-hacking trial on Thursday that the safe in the newspaper was where the top secrets were kept as a form of insurance.

“The editor’s safe is legendary where the secrets of the great and the good are kept for a rainy day when they might provide leverage for the paper,” Evans said.

He referred to the safe after being questioned about a claim he made earlier in the week in the hacking trial that he had been instructed to make a copy of a tape of an intimate message left by Sienna Miller and put it in a Jiffy bag.

Timothy Langdale QC, counsel for former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, put it to Evans that there was no safe in Coulson’s office. “This is another example of story-telling, of fiction, by you,” Langdale added.

Evans responded that there was a safe in another former colleague’s office if it was not physically in the editor’s office.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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