Will Lewis
Will Lewis is the group manager of News International's newspapers (Leveson Inquiry)

One of the News International (NI) executives leading the internal investigation into malpractice by the company's journalists is reportedly so fearful for his personal safety that he has hired a private security firm to protect him and his family.

Will Lewis, group manager of NI's newspapers who is working on parent company's Management and Standards Committee (MSC) set up to probe journalistic malpractice after the phone hacking scandal, has a private security firm protecting his home, sources close to the company told Reuters.

Lewis, one-time editor of the Daily Telegraph, who won journalist of the year for the paper's coverage of the MPs expenses scandal, has allegedly invoked the fury of NI journalists by handing over 300m internal emails and memos to police detectives at Scotland Yard, triggering the arrest of Sun journalists past and present.

They were handed over as part of the Metropolitan Police's Operations Weeting and Elveden, into phone hacking and corrupt payments to public officers respectively.

This is exactly what Lewis and others working on the MSC were asked to do by the company, says NI.

Dozens of former and current NI journalists have been arrested in recent months. So far none have been charged with allegations of phone hacking or making corrupt payments.

Recently it emerged that two senior journalists at the Sun newspaper attempted suicide amid the intense media and police pressure on the company.