July 8 (Bloomberg) -- News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said he wasn’t aware of any payments made to settle legal cases in which the company’s newspaper reporters may have been involved in criminal activity.

“If that had happened, I would know about it,” Murdoch said in an interview today at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reported today that News Corp.’s News Group Newspapers paid out more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle legal cases that may have revealed evidence of journalists’ involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy about out-of-court settlements in three cases that may have shown evidence of journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills, the newspaper said.

Alice Macandrew, a spokeswoman for News Corp.’s News International unit, declined to comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Pulley in New York at bpulley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 8, 2009 16:30 EDT