London, Thanasis Gavos

New journalistic revelations in Britain reveal that the management of the British Post Office (Post Office) she was aware of technical problems with the Horizon software, which for years had been showing false cash balances in the accounts of thousands of local post offices.

Despite this fact, however, Post Office managers continued for years to plead ignorance and take legal action against local post office managers, resulting in the bankruptcy, imprisonment and even suicide of many of them.

The BBC has seen a draft 2016-17 report by audit firm Deloitte, which investigated the case. In this document it is stated that the management of the Post Office had been informed about the detection of technical problems in the Horizon system.

The Post Office, however, continued to prosecute the local postmasters, accusing them of theft. According to the BBC, the agency spent £100m of taxpayers’ money on these legal challenges despite knowing the allegations were baseless.

Deloitte’s key finding was that it was possible to change the accounting records of each local post office from the offices of the Fujitsu company that had created the software, without the person in charge of each post office being aware of it.

This fact is confirmed by a second revelation by Channel 4 which aired recorded telephone conversations of investigators with Post Office officials as early as 2013. The investigators, who were employed by the Post Office but were fired after the investigation, inform officials of the possibility remote access and changes to the accounts of local post offices without the knowledge of those responsible for their operation.

The so-called Horizon scandal was described by Prime Minister Sunak as “the biggest miscarriage of justice” in the country’s modern history. The government promoted a law to acquit the accused officials of the local post office.

The scandal concerns the misattribution and unfair prosecution of hundreds of local post office managers in Britain between 1999 and 2015 for accounting deficits in their branch accounts.

Many of the defendants had initially but in vain indicated to central management that the software suffered from technical problems.

The Post Office administration prosecuted at least 736 local postmasters and charged a total of nearly 3,500 of them.

Some ended up in prison on charges of false accounting and theft, others committed suicide, hundreds are still suffering psychologically and many were financially ruined as they tried to cover the shortfalls with their own money, among other things.

After years the victims of this case won in 2021 the legal battle to review their cases.

The case has been thrust back into the limelight following a four-episode TV series, based on the true events, which aired on ITV at the start of the year.