Rebekah Brooks "categorically" denies making a corrupt payment to a serving member of the armed forces or the Ministry of Defence or to a serving police officer, an Old Bailey jury has heard.
The former editor of the News of the World and the Sun newspapers made the flat-out denials in 2012 while being interviewed by police officers who were investigating claims that telephones had been hacked. She was responding to questions about how she ran the top-selling tabloids while she was in charge.
The written statements she prepared to rebut the allegations were read out to the jury.
In the statement she made on 21 March 2012, Brooks told detectives: "I categorically deny the allegation that you have put to me that I was involved in a conspiracy to make corrupt payments to the serving member of the armed forces, or the employee of the MoD."
In another denial she made during a police interview on 4 October 2012, Brooks said: "I have chosen to answer the allegations that you have put to me today by means of a statement. I have never knowingly authorised a corrupt payment to a serving police officer.
"I have never had a serving police officer as a paid source as editor of the Sun and the News of the World. I never sanctioned either explicitly or implicitly corrupt payments to serving police officers."
All of the defendants deny all of the charges.
The trial continues.
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