No US charges for News Corp

In statements filed with United States regulators on Monday, News Corp. and Twenty-First Century Fox each said that the Justice Department had "completed its investigation of voicemail interception and payments to public officials in London and is declining to prosecute."

The Rupert Murdoch-owned companies, which are based in New York, had been investigated to see whether they broke United States anti-corruption laws.

In 2011, it was revealed that reporters working for some of News Corporation's British tabloids had for years been accessing private voicemails in search of stories. The newspaper at the center of the scandal, the News of the World, closed down in 2011 following revelations that reporters had hacked into the voicemail of a missing British schoolgirl, who had been murdered.

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who had also served as a media advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, served less than a third of an 18-month prison sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to intercept voicemails.

Another key editor and executive, Rebekah Brooks, was last year cleared of charges of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in relation to the scandal. Several journalists working for Murdoch-owned tabloids in the UK have faced court in recent years following allegations of hacking phones or bribing officials for information.

Murdoch split his media empire into two companies in 2013, with the News Corp. focusing on newspapers and publishing and Twenty-First Century Fox focusing on television and film. In the UK, the Murdoch empire counteracted the demise of weekly Sunday paper News of the World with the launch of a Sunday edition of tabloid The Sun.

se/msh (AP, AFP)