Just a day after the launch of the Sunday edition of The Sun, leveson inquiry produces hard evidence of massive corruption at the tabloid, suggesting that its scribes routinely indulged in unlawful practices and bribe public officials.

According to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sue Akers, the corruption is deeply-rooted into British public life and involves virtually all arms of the government and the civic authorities. People at the helm of The Sun, one of Britain’s top-selling newspaper, are practising a “culture of illegal payments”, she said in a press briefing.

The Leveson Inquiry learns that bribery was more of a norm than exception at the tabloid and that its reporters made “multiple payments” to high-ranking officials in the government, prisons, police, military and health departments. A scribe, whose name is withheld as of now for the sake of investigation, reportedly took from a source more than £150,000 to gain exclusivity to gossipy stories, Ms Akers disclosed, adding that a government official received over a period of time £80,000 as bribe from The Sun.

“The current assessment of the evidence is that it reveals a network of corrupted officials” who forged papers to funnel the illegal money, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police told Lord Justice Leveson.

Following the phone-hacking scandal that broke out in the UK last year, Scotland Yard intensified its surveillance at News International’s headquarters, housed in Wapping, east London. This was followed by the arrest of nine senior pressmen of The Sun.