Quote:LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - One of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice, the wrongful conviction of hundreds of Post Office workers due to faulty software, has exploded into the public domain following a TV drama, triggering demands for justice.

In a more than 20-year scandal, some postal workers were sent to prison and others lost their livelihoods and homes.

An independent inquiry as well as a police investigation into the scandal are being carried out, and business executives and former ministers are under scrutiny.

Below is a detailed look at the case:

WHAT IS THE POST OFFICE SCANDAL?

Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of a glitches in a software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.

Some spent time in jail while others went bankrupt, saw their marriages destroyed and some died before their names were cleared.

Managers at Post Office branches across Britain, called sub-postmasters, are often at the heart of their communities, trusted individuals who handle people's savings and pensions.

The Post Office maintained for years that data from the defective Horizon computer accounting system, developed by Japan's Fujitsu and rolled out in 1999, was reliable, while accusing sub-postmasters of theft.

HOW DID THE SCANDAL UNFOLD?

The issues with Horizon, where the system would incorrectly show shortfalls in the accounts of individual branches, began to be reported to the Post Office from the early 2000s.

Over the next decade, a number of sub-postmasters either found their Post Office contracts terminated, were made bankrupt or were jailed after being found guilty of stealing money.

In 2009, trade publication Computer Weekly reported the claims of flaws with Horizon, alongside the postmaster prosecutions.

Amid mounting pressure from the media and lawmakers, the Post Office began to investigate the issue, but in 2015, its boss Paula Vennells told a parliamentary committee that there had been no evidence of any miscarriage of justice.

WHAT COMPENSATION HAVE VICTIMS RECEIVED?

In late 2019, the Post Office agreed to settle claims made by 555 sub-postmasters. However, many of the victims found the amount paid in compensation was outweighed by legal fees.

The government says roughly 138 million pounds ($175 million) have so far been paid out to over 2,700 claimants across three separate Post Office compensation schemes.

Still, many postmasters are yet to receive compensation or have their convictions quashed.

WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING?

Spurred to act following a public outcry after the TV drama, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seeking to use new legislation to overturn the wrongful convictions, calling it one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Britain's history.

Under the plan, sub-postmasters will be able to sign a document to have their convictions reversed and claim compensation.

But some legal experts have warned that the unprecedented step of legislating to quash convictions meant that politicians were meddling in the independent judicial process, potentially risking similar interference in the future on other issues.

The normal process for anyone to have their conviction overturned in Britain is for the convicted party to lodge an appeal.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

An independent public inquiry led by a former high court judge is gathering evidence from postal workers, the government, the Post Office, Fujitsu and others. The inquiry is expected to conclude later this year.
London's Metropolitan Police has also confirmed it is conducting its own investigation into the Post Office over potential fraud offences arising from the wrongful prosecutions.

HAS ANYONE BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE?

No senior Post Office staff have been punished to date.

Vennells, who received more than 4.5 million pounds in salary and bonuses during her seven-year tenure, stepped down in 2019 before the Post Office agreed to pay 58 million pounds in a settlement with 555 sub-postmasters.

In 2021 she resigned from the boards of two retailers after 39 sub-postmasters had their criminal convictions overturned, saying her past at the Post Office had become a distraction.

After a public outcry, Vennells returned her CBE, an honour bestowed in 2019 for services to the Post Office and charity, since the broadcast of "Mr Bates vs The Post Office", the ITV drama about the scandal.
Former postal affairs minister Ed Davey has also come under the spotlight. The now-leader of the small Liberal Democrats party refused to meet sub-postmaster Alan Bates in May 2010, saying in a letter that it would not serve any useful purpose.

Davey, who later met Bates but did not intervene in any of the cases, said he was "clearly misled" by Post Office executives.

Fujitsu, which has continued to win multiple British government contracts, says it is "fully committed" to supporting an ongoing independent public inquiry. It says it has apologised for its role in a scandal.

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Reuters

Quote:The Fujitsu boss who told Paula Vennells that the Horizon computer system was as secure as Fort Knox is a top UK chief executive who lives in a £4 million house in north London.

Duncan Tait, the chief executive of Fujitsu UK between 2011 and 2014, made the comment to Vennells, his Post Office counterpart, two sources have confirmed to The Times.

Tait, 57, who declined to apologise in a public statement released last week, is now on a multi-million pound pay deal at Inchcape, a FTSE 250 online car dealership.

Vennells, who led the Post Office between 2010 and 2019, claimed she was told branch accounts could not be changed without the knowledge of postmasters. The conversation with Tait was at the centre of the defence of her actions in the scandal to MPs four years ago.

“I remember being told by Fujitsu’s then CEO when I raised it with him that the system was ‘like Fort Knox’,” Vennells told the business select committee in 2020. “He had been a trusted outsource partner and had the reputation of a highly competent technology sector CEO. His word was important to me.”

Tait’s successor Michael Keegan, the husband of the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has explicitly denied he made the Fort Knox comment, but Tait has remained silent. In a statement provided by the strategic advisory firm Dentons, he said: “I am appalled by the harsh treatment of the sub-postmasters and fully support the public inquiry. It would be inappropriate for me to comment ahead of this.”

Tait has since claimed he was telling Vennells about Horizon’s ability to resist cyber attacks and was not commenting on remote access, it is understood. The revelation that Tait made the comment sparked anger from MPs. Kevan Jones, a Labour MP and longtime campaigner for postmasters, said: “It was welcome on Friday that current management of Fujitsu were prepared to be open and honest about their role in this scandal. Those in charge at the time now need to come forward and explain exactly what their role was and what they knew, including Mr Tait.”

The comments by Vennells became the opening salvo in a boardroom blame game between bosses of the Post Office and Fujitsu. On Friday, Paul Patterson, the current chief executive of Fujitsu in Europe, accused the Post Office of editing out evidence of Horizon faults in witness statements filed to courts, labelling the withholding of crucial evidence “shameful” and “appalling”.
He said he was “truly sorry” on behalf of the company, but so far executives at the helm at key moments of the scandal, which saw close to 1,000 sub-postmasters convicted based on faulty data from Fujitsu’s IT system, have remained out of the spotlight.

Between 2011 and 2014 there was growing pressure on the Post Office to launch a full, independent investigation into Horizon and the hundreds of prosecutions that relied on its data. In 2013, the Post Office received a legal advice document stating the barrister Simon Clarke’s view that “several” court trials had been misled on Horizon’s reliability. The Detica report, also from 2013, found that the Post Office was unable to account for “significant values” of cash in its network.

Vennells has claimed her confidence in Horizon came from Fujitsu’s top team, saying in another part of her 2020 statement that “the message that the board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that … it was fundamentally sound”.



In spite of the scandal Tate has remained in top jobs and amassed millions of pounds in pay and bonuses. In the four financial years he was chief executive of Fujitsu Service Limited, the highest-paid director, who is likely to have been Tait, took home £3.2 million in remuneration. When Tait stood down as chief executive, he became the first non-Japanese person to be appointed to the board of Fujitsu Global. He left the firm in 2019.

Accounts for 2020 show that a director — understood to be Tait — received £2.6 million in “compensation for loss of office”. Fujitsu would not confirm who received the money.

His appointment to chief executive of Inchcape, a FTSE 250 online car dealership, was announced in May 2020, and since then Tait has pocketed £4.3 million in pay and bonuses in two financial years.

He now lives with his partner in a four-bedroom terraced home, worth about £4 million, in north London. Inchcape, whose share price is subject to the tides of the stock market, is understood to be watching carefully as attention turns to Fujitsu’s role in the Horizon scandal.

Liam Byrne, the chairman of the business and trade select committee, asked who made the Fort Knox comment in an evidence session last week. “Paula Vennells said that there was a Fujitsu boss who told her that Horizon was ‘like Fort Knox’,” Byrne said. “Do you know who in Fujitsu made that comment?” Nick Read, the chief executive of the Post Office, said: “I don’t know who that was, no. I merely saw the quote in the newspapers.”

The UK Times