Utterly disgraceful !!
Some committed suicide over it
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Utterly disgraceful !!
Some committed suicide over it
That is the very sad and sickening part of it Tony. Heads should roll for it.Originally Posted by BLUETIT
Spedger
The CEO who was in charge of the post office at the time was awarded a CBE for her services to the post office - absolutely scandalous, you couldn’t make it up! They should be jailed for their incompetence and continued persecution, not rewarded. No doubt there was a lot of covering up going on too
signed 1,026,271
The real Mr Bates on ITV WALES in a minute
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The Post Office is under criminal investigation over the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of sub-postmasters, Scotland Yard confirmed for the first time on Friday evening.
Metropolitan Police detectives are looking at “potential fraud offences” committed in the handling of the Horizon IT scandal.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted at least 700 postmasters over allegations of fraud, theft and false accounting based on evidence from the faulty Horizon computer system. Hundreds were bankrupted or jailed and at least four people took their own lives.
Postmasters claimed that tens of millions of pounds wrongly clawed back went into Post Office profits.
On Friday, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police told The Times that officers were “investigating potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions”, relating to “monies recovered from sub-postmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions”.
It is not clear whether the investigation relates to individual staff members or the Post Office as a corporate entity. The Met is already investigating two former Fujitsu experts, who were witnesses in the trials, for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Fujitsu is the company behind the Horizon software.
Victims of the Horizon scandal have been put in the spotlight this week as ITV aired a four-part drama about the miscarriage of justice called Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Fifty new potential victims have contacted lawyers after the drama was broadcast, including five who wish to appeal their convictions.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which refers cases to the Court of Appeal, has urged more potential victims to come forward. It issued a statement on Friday saying that it “might be able to help if your appeal was unsuccessful, or if you pleaded guilty in a magistrates’ court, or if you are a close relative of a former sub-postmaster who has died”.
A postmistress who played a chief role in the fight for justice said she “hopes there will be criminal prosecutions”.
Jo Hamilton, 66, from Hampshire, who led fellow postmasters in a historic Court of Appeals case in 2021, told The Times: “They’ve made people’s lives a misery and they’ve committed crimes. It’s not just a computer problem — this is absolute corruption at its worst, state-sponsored corruption.”
Since the landmark Court of Appeal judgment, more than 90 sub-postmasters have had their convictions quashed, but more than 550 are yet to come forward. A public inquiry is expected to conclude this year.
The scandal started in 1999 when glitches in new £1 billion accounting software, Horizon, led to unexplained shortfalls across the network’s 20,000 branches. Under the terms of their contracts, the postmasters were liable for the losses and the Post Office demanded that they repay the money or face closure, prosecution, or a civil claim.
The High Court ruled that the Post Office’s IT experts were aware of bugs in the system from the early 2000s, but its legal team continued to prosecute and chase losses. It is not known how much cash was paid back for imaginary shortfalls but so far £151 million has been paid in compensation.
Paul Marshall, a barrister who represents several of the wrongly convicted postmasters, said that “the emergence of information suggesting that the Met police is looking at fraud in connection with the Post Office’s conduct is wholly unsurprising”.
He added: “Once it is accepted that postmasters were not experiencing real shortfalls at their branches, the money that the Post Office obtained from them, through demands … were themselves improper demands for money and money that was received unlawfully.”
In an interim report in 2013, Second Sight, the company appointed by the Post Office to conduct an independent investigation into Horizon, found large amounts of unidentified credits in Post Office suspense accounts and raised the question of where the money came from.
Marshall added: “The reality therefore appears to have been that the Post Office obtained large sums of money from its postmasters on grounds that were false and that were known by it to be false.”
Tom Little, KC, a senior treasury counsel for the Crown Prosecution Service, has been advising the police during the inquiry. He is part of a team of six barristers — described as the “brightest and the best” — who prosecute the most serious and complex cases for the CPS.
Sources said he would be the “point man” in deciding who, if anyone, would be investigated and prosecuted, although the CPS has no formal involvement until after someone is charged.
“The police will be watching each and every day of this phase. The inquiry is asking the same questions as the police would ask at interview,” an inquiry source told The Times last month.
The Post Office has refused to give a specific figure for how much money was clawed back from sub-postmasters. A spokesman said: “We share fully the aims of the public inquiry to get to the truth of what went wrong in the past and establish accountability. It’s for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after consideration of all the evidence on the issues that it is examining. It would be inappropriate for the Post Office to comment on any police investigation.
“We are doing all we can to put right the wrongs of the past, including providing full and fair compensation for those affected and offers of more than £138 million have been made to around 2,700 postmasters, the vast majority of which are agreed and paid.”
There have also been repeated calls for professional watchdogs to investigate the role of Post Office lawyers in the scandal.
A spokesman for the Solicitors Regulation Authority said on Friday that it had been “investigating this matter since 2021 and the conclusion of the civil case. However, our work is on hold at the public inquiry’s request and will resume once the inquiry has concluded”.
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