In our July 31 e-mail newsletter we carried a Belfast Telegraph article about confidential documents – alarm codes for Northern Ireland business addresses – were anonymously handed over to the Belfast daily paper. Here is the follow-up:
A man has been arrested. The Belfast Telegraph reported that the person who supplied the papers had claimed by telephone that they were found in a waste disposal site – an allegation which the PSNI and the company believe to be false.
According to the Belfast Telegraph documents passed to this newspaper in June contained door alarm codes for an unspecified number of locations. Many of them appeared to have originated from a G4S base in Belfast. The company reports it launched an internal inquiry when contacted by the Belfast Telegraph and swiftly decided to involve the PSNI.
A G4S spokesman said both the firm and police believe the claim regarding a waste disposal site was "unlikely" to be true.
He added: "We can confirm that all the documents passed to the press are required by our operational employees in order to undertake their security duties, and that there were no failings in our internal processes that enabled an individual to obtain information they were not otherwise permitted to have. We take breaches in security extremely seriously and we are continuing with our internal investigation as well as assisting the police with their inquiries."
