Links between Greg Miskiw and others involved with the phone hacking scandal

Following on from yesterday’s post on Ray Adams and his relationship with people involved with the phone hacking scandal I’ve decided to focus on one of the individuals he was linked with, Greg Miskiw:

Another police officer, Sid Fillery, was arrested at the time but later released. Mr Fillery went to take over Mr Morgan's job at Southern Investigations. Mr Fillery also had charges of perverting the course of justice dropped but was later convicted on 15 counts of making indecent images of children.

Mr Rees was being paid by News International to the tune of around £150,000 a year and shared a business address with former senior NI executive (and Northern Ireland editor) Alex Marunchak. Mr Marunchak also likes hackers as he paid one to crack Ian Hurst's (alias Martin Ingram) home PC. Mr Rees also established the firm Abbeycover, at the same address as Southern Investigations, with the former news editor of the News of the World, Greg Miskiw.

As News of the World assistant editor to Andy Coulson (NotW editor 2003-2007) Greg Miskiw gave Glenn Mulcaire a full-time contract, the only private investigator to have a full time contract with the News of the World. Glenn Mulcaire was working as an assistant for John Boyall, who in the late 1990s had been used by the NotW to acquire information from confidential databases . After a falling out between the paper and John Boyall Greg Miskiw appears to have poached Glenn Mulcaire from him.

Greg Miskiw’s and Glenn Mulcaire’s relationship was brought up in a number of inquiries, as reported in the Daily Telegraph:

Records seized by police from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator jailed for hacking for the newspaper, had “Greg” written in a corner. In a legal case involving the actress Sienna Miller, the High Court was told this referred to Mr Miskiw.

In 2009, a parliamentary committee was shown a document on headed News of the World notepaper in which Mr Miskiw offered Mulcaire a £7,000 bonus if he could obtain information to help with a story about Gordon Taylor, the former head of the professional footballers’ association. Mr Taylor later received a secret £700,000 pay-off from the newspaper, after it admitted his phone had been hacked.

Greg Miskiw and John Boyall would be interviewed as part of Operation Glade (corruption in the police service 2003-2005) and the Andy Hayman led Operation Caryatid (phone hacking of royals 2006-2007) along with Glenn Mulcaire. Nick Davies also reported that Greg Miskiw was questioned as part of Operation Motorman (2003-2005).

As mentioned above, Abbeycover was established by Greg Miskiw and Alex Marunchak registered at the same address as Southern Investigations, run by Rees and Sid Fillery. Rees also registered the company Pure Energy at the same address.  This seems to link Greg Miskiw, Jonathan Rees, Sid Fillery, and Alex Marunchak. Alex Marunchak and Jonathan Rees would be linked to Operation Kalmyk, part of Operation Tuleta into trojan emails and computer hacking, with Operation Kalmyk specifically relating to Stakeknife and Ian Hurst.

Greg Miskiw was arrested in August 2011 on suspicion of unlawful interception of communications and conspiring to intercept communications, one month after Terenia Taras, a 39-year-old freelance journalist and ex-girlfriend of Mr Miskiw, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications. Both were arrested as part of Operation Weeting, with Terenia Taras being told she would not face further action by the CPS in July 2012.

Now there’s plenty more to be said about other individuals involved, such as Jonathan Rees and his hiring by Andy Coulson after serving his jail term, and I'll cover those later. By focusing on individuals I'm hoping to make some of the more complex relationships in the phone hacking scandal easier to understand.

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com