A new story in the Guardian reports that News Corporation may be facing a full blown investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This could mean a wide ranging investigation into News Corporation's multinational media empire that the Guardian describes as "Global".
News Corp faces global investigation into bribery
News Corporation faces a global investigation of all its businesses to ascertain whether they engaged in the same acts of bribery revealed to have taken place in the UK between News of the World reporters and police.
How serious is this for News Corp.?
It is too early in the proceedings to know precisely in which direction the justice department will take its investigation, or possibly multiple investigations. A justice department spokesman said: "Any time we see evidence of wrongdoing, we take appropriate action. The department has received letters from several members of Congress regarding allegations related to News Corp and we are reviewing those."
Experts in US company law believe it is increasingly likely that an FCPA inquiry will now follow. The law was introduced in the 1970s to penalise US-based companies from profiting from the spoils of bribery and corruption in other countries.
Speculation has also focused on whether News Corporation employees have engaged in any phone hacking within the US. A US liberal campaigning group, ProtectOurElections.org has put up a sum of $100,000 as a reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of "News Corp employees who hacked the phones of American citizens in the US, or bribed officials or others for information about Americans." The group promised to pass any hard evidence it received to the FBI.
Investors continue fleeing News Corp's stock. After a precipitous drop last week News Corp's stock dropped another 4.8% today losing another couple of billion in market capitalization just today. This following News Corp. burning through $5 Billion to try to prop up the stock price on Tuesday.
See: W stock in toilet News Corp. pours $5 Bill to prop up share price, it fails
Some observers are suggesting that
Rupert Murdoch may have to step down
on order to save News Corp.