Sun journalist Anthony France successfully overturns conviction over payments to public officials
Operation Elveden targeted reporters and cost taxpayers millions - but not a single Sun journalist has been convicted
THE only Sun journalist convicted during a £30million five-year witch-hunt was yesterday cleared by the Court of Appeal.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it was not seeking a retrial — leaving Anthony France, 42, to be formally found not guilty, ending a near four-year ordeal.
It took three senior judges just 27 seconds to quash a jury’s “unsafe” verdict against crime reporter Anthony.
He had been found guilty in 2015 of aiding misconduct in a public office after being charged under the Met’s shambolic Operation Elveden probe into payments for stories.
Yesterday’s ruling by the Court of Appeal means all 21 Sun journalists caught up in the investigation have now been cleared.
Last night outgoing Met Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders were slammed for treating reporters like “members of a terror cell”.
Anthony, known affectionately as “French Tony”, said he was looking forward to rebuilding his life after “1,379 days of sheer hell”.
Author and freedom of speech campaigner Mick Hume said the successful appeal brought to an end “the biggest witch-hunt against journalists in a free society in modern times”.
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He added: “It means not one journalist has been successfully tried under Operation Elveden.
“Police and prosecutors did all they could to make tabloid reporters look like members of a terror cell, arresting some in dawn raids on their family homes.”
Media lawyer David Allen Green, of Preiskel & Co, said: “The prosecutions never had any sound legal basis. That all journalists charged are now acquitted is no surprise.”
ANTHONY’S STATEMENT
I am delighted that this serious miscarriage of justice has ended today, allowing me to rebuild my life after 1,379 days of sheer hell.
I want to thank my family for their love and support. I will always be in admiration of my legal team, Richard Kovalevsky QC and James Hodivala, of 2 Bedford Row, and solicitor Mandip Kumar for their tremendous professionalism.
They, my friends, character witnesses, Oxfam St Albans, Dennis Rice and Press Gazette helped get me through what I can only describe as the worst period of my life.
Post-trial, His Honour Judge Timothy Pontius praised me as ‘essentially a decent man of solid integrity and social responsibility’ and ‘an experienced journalist of hitherto entirely unblemished character ’.
And he added many of the stories I was arrested over about drunk pilots, weapons, drug seizures and terrorists were ‘very much in the public interest, not surprisingly so given his experience in, and pursuit of, responsible investigative journalism’.
Having spent more than three years and nine months fighting to clear my name, this is not a time for celebration. Nobody has ‘won’ and the public are less informed.