The Metropolitan police have asked the BBC to pause its inquiries into a suspended male presenter while specialist officers decide if there is any justification for a criminal investigation.
The BBC director general, Tim Davie, said the Met had taken control of the inquiry, although the police were still at the “scoping” stage of their inquiries and may decide there was no criminal case to answer.
The Sun newspaper sparked a crisis for the broadcaster on Friday night when it accused a male presenter of paying a crack cocaine user “more than £35,000 since they were 17 in return for sordid images”.
Further claims emerged on Tuesday with BBC News publishing entirely separate allegations that a person in their early 20s had been “threatened” by the same prominent presenter after they met on a dating app.
Sources at the Sun moved to try to distance the newspaper from any suggestion the BBC presenter received photographs when the individual was a child, which might be a criminal matter.
They claimed the story published on Friday night was always really about concerned parents trying to stop payments to their vulnerable drug-using 20-year-old, and was never really meant to be about the age of the alleged victim.
If the young person did send any explicit pictures when they were 17 then this could count as images of child sexual abuse, a serious criminal offence. But if the explicit photos were exchanged only after the young person turned 18, then it is possible that no law was broken. The age at which individuals can share explicit photographs is higher than the age at which they can legally have sex.
The Met, which has held conversations with the BBC, has still not opened a criminal investigation into the allegations. The Sun itself said one police force had already told the alleged victim’s stepfather several months ago they could not investigate because “it wasn’t illegal”.
One person at the tabloid insisted the Sun had been “very careful” to not explicitly accuse the BBC presenter of criminal behaviour in its reporting.
The 20-year-old’s lawyer allegedly told the Sun last week that the story was “rubbish” and no illegal activity took place, although the tabloid did not publish this denial until Monday night.
Davie made it clear it was the Sun’s apparent accusation of the potential illegal behaviour which prompted the suspension of the presenter. He said a previous complaint to the BBC by the 20-year-old’s parents had been “very serious but not criminal”.
A spokesperson for the Sun said: “We have reported a story about two very concerned parents who made a complaint to the BBC about the behaviour of a presenter and the welfare of their child. Their complaint was not acted upon by the BBC. We have seen evidence that supports their concerns. It’s now for the BBC to properly investigate.”
The anonymous individual behind Tuesday’s new claims alleged that they were put under pressure to meet up with the presenter – who initially hid their real identity – but never did. When the person, in their 20s, later wrote online that they had been talking to a prominent BBC presenter and were tempted to name them, the BBC star allegedly responded with “abusive, expletive-filled messages”.
The latest developments came as Davie faced questions from the media about his handling of the allegations against the suspended presenter. He confirmed the BBC had paused its own internal investigation into the Sun’s accusations while specialist officers at the Met made inquiries.
The director general also set out the BBC’s own timeline of events, which began in May when the 20-year-old’s family attempted to complain about the presenter’s behaviour by walking into a BBC office. They then called the BBC’s complaints line – usually used by members of the public unhappy with what they have watched on screen.
Davie said this complaint was then passed to the BBC’s internal investigations team, which concluded it was worth pursuing. “On the basis of the information they had at that point, it did not involve an allegation of criminality but it was nonetheless very serious,” said Davie.
The investigations team twice attempted to contact the individual who had made the complaint but received no response, he said, prompting it to pause its inquiry. Davie insisted it was standard procedure for the BBC’s investigations team to verify serious allegations before putting them to presenters: “You could be in a situation where anyone could ring anything in and put it to presenters.”
The director general confirmed the suspended male presenter was only informed of the allegations against him last week, when the Sun contacted the BBC with the more serious and potentially criminal accusations.
Davie also insisted the BBC had a “duty of care” to the suspended presenter and suggested they were providing him with support. He declined to comment on the question of whether blackmail could have been involved.
On Tuesday the BBC also published the salaries of many of the BBC’s leading presenters, alongside data showing how the broadcaster is struggling to connect with youth audiences. It also showed 500,000 fewer television licences were bought last year, in a sign of the other existential crises facing the national broadcaster.
