Post Office Scandal - Disgrace

[FANG]

How the hell was this allowed to affect the lives of 557 post workers and continue for so long.

Surely one of the IT guys would have sussed this issue fairly quickly.

Why did the management take the action they did and draw it out for many years.

Should they now face justice and what punishment applied - Jail or fines.

Or will the tax payer face the bill.

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells goes to ground amid scandal | Daily Mail Online

[sta100]

3 minutes ago, FANG said:

How the hell was this allowed to affect the lives of 557 post workers and continue for so long.

Surely one of the IT guys would have sussed this issue fairly quickly.

Why did the management take the action they did and draw it out for many years.

Should they now face justice and what punishment applied - Jail or fines.

Or will the tax payer face the bill.

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells goes to ground amid scandal | Daily Mail Online

Venells needs to be tried on manslaughter charges

[Si1]

I knew a bloke about 5 years ago who had previously been a supervisor at either the post office or royal mail and said the management culture was evil, and closely in bed with the union management. He said they'd rather see someone die than their own mistakes be shown up.

[Si1]

It's shocking:

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252493199/Post-Office-IT-scandal-CEO-Paula-Vennells-jumps-NHS-ship-as-pressure-mounts

"Late last month, during a hearing of subpostmaster cases in the Court of Appeal, the existence of a document emerged, which allegedly proves the Post Office was advised by one of its own barristers that its expert witnesses, in the prosecutions of subpostmasters, failed to give information that could have undermined prosecutions The disclosure, which has not been made public, is from a barrister, Simon Clarke, to the Post Office about evidence given by an expert witness in the trials.

Conservative peer James Arbuthnot recently said the document could reveal that the Post Office “lied to, and was in contempt of, Parliament” during a previous inquiry into the scandal.

Following Vennells’ resignation, he said: “Can it be a coincidence that shortly after it became clear that the Post Office lied to Parliament, Paula Vennells announced she was stepping down from the NHS job?”

Alexander said: “It seems, from the sequence of events, that the current Court of Appeal proceedings, revelations of a barrister’s advice previously undisclosed by the Post Office and Lord Arbuthnot’s related contention that the Post Office lied and misled Parliament may have been important in the announcement of Paula Vennells’ departure.”

Separately, a former Post Office executive criticised by Fraser in his judgements,r Angela van den Bogerd, has landed a new job. Van den Bogerd left the Post Office quietly and, according to BBC Wales, was last week named “head of people” by the Football Association of Wales.

She faced detailed questioning during the trial. When Fraser handed down his 300-page judgment on 15 March 2019, he said: “There were two specific matters where [Van den Bogerd] did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters, and mislead me.”

Meanwhile, subpostmaster victims of the scandal are still trying to rebuild their lives and are still fighting for justice on many fronts. They were awarded £57.5m in damages, but after legal costs were taken out, they were left with just £11m between them. The JFSA is demanding that the government pay the legal costs to leave victims with a fairer settlement, but the government has refused. One claimant who was wrongly sent to prison, which left her life in tatters, received just £9,000 compensation."

[FANG]

Si1

They should be hung and their assets sold and distributed amongst the accused.

[Si1]

Wasn't the former chairman of the Co-Op bank, who oversaw major losses, also a religious minister? Funny connection.

Paul Flowers.

[highcontrast]

Thanks for posting this @FANG, deserves higlighting for anyone who missed it. But yes, astonishing cover up by the PO and also the developers of the "Horizon" software, Fujitsu, who knew the code was full of bugs and causing errors. They were both ok with innocent people being prosecuted and potentially going to jail, rather than trying to fix the issue.

I think a lot of this case was down to Computerweekly(?) investigating the code itself and whistleblower i think?

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252496560/Fujitsu-bosses-knew-about-Post-Office-Horizon-IT-flaws-says-insider

Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider

A former senior developer who worked for Fujitsu on the Post Office IT system that led to subpostmasters being falsely accused of fraud, has claimed bosses knew of fundamental flaws before going live

N.b. Fujitsu also developed the NHS data system around the same time! I'm not sure if it is still in use now though? Anyone?

On my local news, one of the victims who had a feeling that the software was the issue, was told that no-one else had issues, shocking.

As mentioned by news media, one of the biggest miscarriges of justice, ever. I can honestly say i was choking up when i saw the reports about this last week.

P.s. I reckon this will be made into film, i just hope the profits go to the victims

[highcontrast]

https://www.royalmailchat.co.uk/community/viewtopic.php?t=99619

Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider

• Quote

Post by TrueBlueTerrier » 19 Feb 2021, 10:15

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252 ... ys-insider

The Post Office’s Horizon IT system should “never have seen the light of day” and bosses at supplier Fujitsu allowed it to be rolled out into the Post Office network despite being told it was not fit for purpose, according to a senior developer who worked on the project before it went live.

Horizon is the system at the heart of the scandal that saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly accused of fraud and false accounting until a 2019 High Court case proved the Post Office IT was at fault. Horizon is a counter-top sales and accounting system, commissioned by the government to automate Post Office services. It went live in Post Office branches in 1999 and an updated version is still in use today.

The developer, who has not previously talked publicly about his experiences on the project, told Computer Weekly that in the months leading up to its launch, Horizon’s problems were well known inside Fujitsu.

“Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it was a bag of s**t”, he said. “It had gone through the test labs God knows how many times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”

The senior developer said he was contracted to work on the Horizon project between 1998 and 2000, at one point holding the job title Horizon Epos [electronic point of sale] development manager. He has asked to remain anonymous, but is prepared to give sworn witness statements to solicitors acting for subpostmasters in their ongoing appeals against past convictions.

The developer has also asked Computer Weekly to pass his contact details to the government’s Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, chaired by former High Court judge Wyn Williams.

Central to his allegation is that Horizon’s Epos system was initially built with “no design documents, no test documents, no peer reviews, no code reviews, no coding standards”.

[winkie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j

Shocking can be Jailed as a criminal without police or CPS involvement.