A senior executive at public relations company APCO Worldwide told a contractor to “get rid of everything” after receiving a legal notice to preserve records, according to audio obtained by the FT.
Tom Harper, APCO’s head of media relations in Europe, also asked for advice on how to delete a Proton Mail email account without “digital forensics” being able to detect it in any future litigation.
The comments, made in leaked recordings, are potentially embarrassing for APCO, a well-known Washington-based lobbying firm whose clients have included Apple, Microsoft and the Premier League.
The events relate to a dispute involving APCO, News UK and the centre-left group Labour Together, which has already led to the resignation of one minister in Sir Keir Starmer’s government.
Harper told the contractor on February 13 that the company had received a notice to preserve documents from News UK, whose journalists APCO had investigated, and that the notice would soon be sent on to the contractor.
“The general counsel called me, and he says that I need to forward on, I need to forward on the threat from the legal counsel of News UK, to sort of preserve documents and stuff,” Harper said.
“In the event that this blows up and there’s a long-running litigation or whatever, you know, I just — basically get rid of everything, anything you need to now,” he added.
The APCO report, authored by Harper, was commissioned by Labour Together after the Sunday Times in 2023 revealed details of undisclosed donations to the influential organisation, which helped Sir Keir Starmer win control of the Labour Party and which remains close to his government.
The existence of the report, which probed the “backgrounds and motivations” of journalists who had written about Labour Together’s funding, was revealed in February and led to the resignation of cabinet minister Josh Simons, who had commissioned APCO when he was running the think-tank.
One recording also shows Harper, who describes himself on APCO’s website as an “internationally recognized advisor”, saying he “sent the report to the client via an encrypted Proton Mail address” in order to “muddy the waters of the trace, you know, the audit trail”.
Harper then asks the contractor if he were to delete the email account, would it be possible for “digital forensics” to later reveal he had done so.
“If this gets to litigation, and phones are analysed, and they know about that Proton Mail account, if I now delete it, if I use my private phone, that’s not an APCO phone, to delete it. Will they be able to see that through digital forensics or something like that?” he said.
That recording indicates that Harper was reassured by the contractor that he did not need to delete the account given that Harper had said the emails on the account had been removed “long ago”.
APCO’s lawyers told the FT that it had “acted promptly to preserve documents” and had no knowledge of any intention to destroy records.
They also said: “Mr Harper has denied that he ever instructed the contractor to destroy any materials in contradiction of the APCO Legal Hold that was communicated to them both.” Harper did not respond to requests for comment.
On Thursday last week, four Labour MPs put forward a parliamentary motion alleging that “a contractor has been instructed by a senior employee of APCO Worldwide to destroy material relating to work undertaken for Labour Together”.
The motion, led by former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, claimed that the material “was subject to a legal hold”.
The MPs said the person “subsequently made a protected disclosure to the Serious Fraud Office concerning that work”.
The motion added that the person was at present “subject to proceedings at the London Court of International Arbitration brought by APCO Worldwide through its solicitors Withers LLP”.
APCO, through its lawyers, said that the arbitration had begun before any whistleblowing report had been made, and that the motion gave a misleading impression.
The APCO report looked into journalists such as Sunday Times reporter Gabriel Pogrund and included claims about his religious background, ideological beliefs, and how his work could be viewed as “destabilising to the UK” and in support of “Russia’s strategic foreign policy objectives”.
Simons has claimed the APCO report went far beyond its brief, which was to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a 2023 Sunday Times story about undeclared donations to Labour Together.
“I did not expect APCO’s report to include reprehensible material on Gabriel Pogrund, and nor did I welcome it,” Simons said. “I took immediate action and removed it. What happened to Gabriel was a disgrace.”
The APCO report also focused on work by the investigative journalist Paul Holden and the former Sunday Times reporter Harry Yorke — who, along with Pogrund, were named as “significant persons of interest”.
Labour Together was previously run by Morgan McSweeney, who went on to serve as Starmer’s chief of staff until he resigned earlier this year.
APCO earlier this year said that it was undertaking “a detailed internal review” of the work it did for Labour Together.
“We are deeply committed to upholding our values and standards as an organisation and treat any suggestion that we have failed to do so very seriously,” it said.
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