he has always been oriented towards salacious sleaze and right-wing causes. So the idea that he is hands-off when it comes to the cases that are being investigated now is kind of strange. If he didn't know, he at least set the example and there may well be records. Shadow accounting is a big part of the News Corp system, tax havens and tax accountants and lawyers. Its said that the biggest profit center for News Corp is the team of tax lawyers and accountants in NYC that handle the international tax minimization schemes. The book the Murdoch Archipeligo by a financial journalist documents the very brazen and sophisticated corporate tax accounting. The international structure of the corporation is so complicated, very few people, maybe only really Murdoch, knows exactly how it all hangs together. This is to prevent takeovers.
So, it may well be, that the NoTW rot goes all the way to the top. No wonder he wants to cut off the diseased limb. But as I have posted before, all 140 newspapers share a single production system, so the contagion is global.
Murdoch is famous for micro-managing editorial and budgets, and I expect there is a whistleblower or two out there sitting on something, scared whitless.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/01/rupert_murdoch_-_a_portrait_of.html http://search.lbo-talk.org/search/swish.cgi?query=nicholas+roberts&submit=Search%21&metaname=swishdefault&sort=unixdate