The Metropolitan Police is “assessing information” supplied by the BBC over claims one of its male presenters paid a teenager for explicit pictures.
The force is now carrying out further enquiries to establish whether any crime has been committed following the allegations, which were first revealed by The Sun newspaper on Saturday.
Earlier today, representatives for the broadcaster spoke to Met detectives, who said they are looking at the information discussed at the virtual meeting – but have not yet launched an investigation.
The unnamed “household name” gave the youth around £35,000 in exchange for sexual images over a three-year period, it is alleged.
The young person, now aged 20, is said to have been 17 when the payments were first made in 2020, reported The Sun.
According to their mother, the individual spent the money on a drug habit, the paper claimed.
The presenter was suspended by the BBC on Sunday.
A Met Police statement said: “Detectives from the Met’s specialist crime command met with representatives from the BBC on the morning of Monday, 10 July. The meeting took place virtually.
“They are assessing the information discussed at the meeting and further enquiries are taking place to establish whether there is evidence of a criminal offence being committed.
“There is no investigation at this time.”
In new allegations published in The Sun on Monday, the presenter is reported to have called the young person to ask “what have you done?”.
He then allegedly asked the young person to speak to their mother and urge her to stop the investigation, the paper added.
The mother claimed no one from the broadcaster initially got in touch with her when she raised a complaint in May.
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What we know about claims against BBC star
Read more:
Presenter should only be named after ‘full’ investigation – justice secretary
Everything we know about the claims
The stars who have denied it’s them
In a statement, the BBC said it “takes any allegations seriously” and has “robust internal processes in place to proactively deal with such allegations”.
The BBC said that while it first became aware of a complaint in May, “new allegations” of a “different nature” were put to it on Thursday, adding it had been “in touch with external authorities, in line with our protocols”.
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Jeremy Vine: ‘It can’t be me’
Gary Lineker, Rylan Clark, Jeremy Vine and Nicky Campbell are among the BBC stars to have publicly stated that they are not the presenter in question.
The presenter remains unnamed due to a number of reasons.
Firstly, the reports in The Sun are allegations and it is not clear what evidence they have and who supplied it.
It is also unclear if any laws have been broken, without knowing the content of the alleged photographs, and when exactly they were sent.
And the UK’s defamation laws protect individuals against harm, reputational or otherwise, caused by things that have been said about them which turn out to be false.
