British police have opened a fraud investigation into UK Post Office over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing money when a faulty computer system was to blame.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said late on Friday that it is investigating “potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions,” relating to money the Post Office received “as a result of prosecutions or civil actions” against accused postal workers.
Police also are investigating potential offenses of perjury and perverting the course of justice over investigations and prosecutions carried out by the Post Office.
Photo: EPA-EFE
From 1999 until 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were accused of theft or fraud because computers wrongly showed that money was missing. Many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the company, and some were convicted and sent to prison. Several killed themselves.
The real culprit was a defective computer accounting system called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, that was installed in local Post Office branches in 1999.
The Post Office maintained for years that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty when the system showed money was missing.
After years of campaigning by victims and their lawyers, the British Court of Appeal quashed 39 of the convictions in 2021.
A judge said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of Horizon and had committed “egregious” failures of investigation and disclosure.
A total of 93 of the postal workers have now had their convictions overturned, the Post Office said, but many others have yet to be exonerated, and only 30 have agreed to “full and final” compensation payments.
A public inquiry into the scandal has been underway since 2022.
So far, no one from the publicly owned Post Office or other companies involved has been arrested or faced criminal charges.
Lee Castleton, a former branch manager who went bankrupt after being pursued by the Post Office for missing funds, said his family was ostracized in their hometown of Bridlington in northern England.
Castleton said his daughter was bullied because people thought “her father was a thief, and he’d take money from old people.”
He said victims wanted those responsible to be named.
“It’s about accountability,” Castleton told Times Radio on Saturday. “Let’s see who made those decisions and made this happen.”
The long-simmering scandal stirred new outrage with the broadcast this week of a TV docudrama, Mr. Bates vs the Post Office. It charted a two-decade battle by branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, to expose the truth and clear the wronged postal workers.
Post Office chief executive officer Nick Read, appointed after the scandal, welcomed the TV series and said he hoped it would “raise further awareness and encourage anyone affected who has not yet come forward to seek the redress and compensation they deserve.”
A lawyer for some of the postal workers said 50 new potential victims had approached lawyers since the show aired on the ITV network.
“The drama has elevated public awareness to a whole new level,” British attorney Neil Hudgell said. “The British public and their overwhelming sympathy for the plight of these poor people has given some the strength to finally come forward. Those numbers increase by the day, but there are so many more out there.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to