Topic: The Post Office Scandal

[Wabaloolah]

That's the concern I raised last month and it's one I still hold. It is for the courts to overturn unsafe convictions, not parliament

[Jiminy Cricket]

Yeah. And said legislation would not only overturn the convictions of the innocent, but it would also overturn the convictions of the small number of individuals who did actually defraud or steal from the PO. Further, it would also entitle the properly guilty to the same compensation as the innocent. That's the problem with this approach - it does not actually determine guilt or innocence. That strikes me as a bit bonkers.

What does the group who represents the Postmasters have to say about the use of a Parliamentary act to find them innocent? Does anyone here know?

[TSC]

That's the concern I raised last month and it's one I still hold. It is for the courts to overturn unsafe convictions, not parliament

That will likely push the process into the long grass for Labour to pick up, if indeed it wins the next GE.  While it may be the best approach legally, more of the victims may die while this already elongated process rumbles on.

[Fortneef]

Yeah. And said legislation would not only overturn the convictions of the innocent, but it would also overturn the convictions of the small number of individuals who did actually defraud or steal from the PO. Further, it would also entitle the properly guilty to the same compensation as the innocent. That's the problem with this approach - it does not actually determine guilt or innocence. That strikes me as a bit bonkers.

What does the group who represents the Postmasters have to say about the use of a Parliamentary act to find them innocent? Does anyone here know?

You have pulled these "guilty" postmasters out of your arse.

[Jiminy Cricket]

You have pulled these "guilty" postmasters out of your arse.

No. I don't believe so. This was discussed a few pages back.

Don't worry about the precedent as a) it's been well accepted that parliament can do this for a long time, and b)  it has happened quite a few times before (I'd say just under half of all finance acts for the last 20 years have some bit of retrospective legislation to overturn a decision of the tax courts).

This nothing new and has no precedent value

The real calculus here is whether it is worth the few guilty people being exonerated as a trade off for the innocent having their innocence recognized in a timely manner

FYI @CowboyKangaroo is a solicitor.

[Fortneef]

I think kangaroo was making a rhetorical point, obviously you don't postpone exonerating 99 innocent people in order to sift out 1 guilty person unless you are a complete nutter.



And If you think im wrong,  please estimate what percentage of the postmasters are guilty -  and show your evidence and working. 

Because its 0% until proved otherwise.

[Jiminy Cricket]

I think kangaroo was making a rhetorical point, obviously you don't postpone exonerating 99 innocent people in order to sift out 1 guilty person unless you are a complete nutter.

And If you think im wrong,  please estimate what percentage of the postmasters are guilty -  and show your evidence and working. 

Because its 0% until proved otherwise.

I was as specific as I cared to be in my original post:

Yeah. And said legislation would not only overturn the convictions of the innocent, but it would also overturn the convictions of the small number of individuals who did actually defraud or steal from the PO. Further, it would also entitle the properly guilty to the same compensation as the innocent. That's the problem with this approach - it does not actually determine guilt or innocence. That strikes me as a bit bonkers.

What does the group who represents the Postmasters have to say about the use of a Parliamentary act to find them innocent? Does anyone here know?

But the (even greater) problem is that the legislation would then also entitle the properly guilty to similar compensation payments as those who were maliciously prosecuted by the PO.

[Fortneef]

Like I said, you've imagined these guilty postmasters.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Like I said, you've imagined these guilty postmasters.

You'll have explain why you presume all the postmasters prosecuted for theft and/or fraud are innocent. Your position defies logic.

https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/innocent-postmasters-to-be-cleared

[Fortneef]

All Horizon evidence is bogus : the pre-horizon prosecution rate was a tenth the post horizon rate.   

Surely the legislation can be crafted to differentiate between horizon and non-horizon evidence? 

[CowboyKangaroo]

Of the cases heard by the Court of Appeal, I am aware of 7* convictions being upheld (of approximately 140). The figure the post office gives is around 50, but this duplicitous as includes cases not referred (usually due a death of a claimant with no party to advance the claim) and cases where the theft conviction was overturned but subsequent consequential criminality was upheld.

If you remain in doubt, I can provide the names and the case references later. (Also, those cases assume the horizon data to be worthless - these convictions remain because after examination they were determined to be convicted on non-horizon evidence)

*A non-scientific methodology was carried out by reading the cases which cite Hamilton v PO (the criminal test case overturning the first conviction. The figure might be slightly higher but not meaningfully

[CowboyKangaroo]

All Horizon evidence is bogus : the pre-horizon prosecution rate was a tenth the post horizon rate.   

Surely the legislation can be crafted to differentiate between horizon and non-horizon evidence?

Sadly no. The process for working out which is which, is the process happening right now. And 140 cases in 2 years is the court being quick. The remaining 550 will take another few years. You either get it done right, which is painfully slow for the innocent, or you likely exonerate a few guilty folk by taking the quick option (legislation)

[Jiminy Cricket]

All Horizon evidence is bogus : the pre-horizon prosecution rate was a tenth the post horizon rate.   

Surely the legislation can be crafted to differentiate between horizon and non-horizon evidence?

Evidently, you failed to read the content at the linked page I provided. It is not possible to differentiate between the guilty and innocent if there is no retrial. The advantage of an Act is speed, simplicity, and it being relatively cheap. The disadvantages are that guilty parties will be exonerated and compensated too.

[Fortneef]

All Horizon evidence is bogus therefore all people convicted on Horizon evidence alone are innocent. Why is a retrial needed for those cases?

[CowboyKangaroo]

All Horizon evidence is bogus therefore all people convicted on Horizon evidence alone are innocent. Why is a retrial needed for those cases?

Because of the 700 odd convicted, we don't know which are which without the judicial examination of the matter

When a person is convicted they were not branded with horizon tattoo. It requires complex examination of the evidence presented to determine whether it heavily relied on the horizon data, or whether there was further evidence

[Jiminy Cricket]

All Horizon evidence is bogus therefore all people convicted on Horizon evidence alone are innocent. Why is a retrial needed for those cases?

Again. Did you even bother reading the linked blog (from a solicitor)?

In some cases, there was other evidence completely unrelated to Horizon.

[Fortneef]

I did.

Look at Kangaroos figures

A baseline of 7/140 appeals turned down -  ie 5% -  and a decade to plow through the backlog

Its clear that normal practice is unjust.   

[Jiminy Cricket]

I did.

Look at Kangaroos figures

A baseline of 7/140 appeals turned down -  ie 5% -  and a decade to plow through the backlog

Its clear that normal practice is unjust.

So. Are we now in agreement?

Yeah. And said legislation would not only overturn the convictions of the innocent, but it would also overturn the convictions of the small number of individuals who did actually defraud or steal from the PO. Further, it would also entitle the properly guilty to the same compensation as the innocent. That's the problem with this approach - it does not actually determine guilt or innocence. That strikes me as a bit bonkers.

What does the group who represents the Postmasters have to say about the use of a Parliamentary act to find them innocent? Does anyone here know?

[CowboyKangaroo]

I did.

Look at Kangaroos figures

A baseline of 7/140 appeals turned down -  ie 5% -  and a decade to plow through the backlog

Its clear that normal practice is unjust.

I'm very sympathetic to the position that it will take too long (particularly given the affected class are not young), but the rights of the innocent vs the guilty receiving compensation is a difficult equation to balance - one without easy answers.

As I've said earlier in the thread - I would, on balance, exonerate them all - but we can't disregard the gain that this would give the guilty. It must remain part of the consideration

[Jiminy Cricket]

I'm very sympathetic to the position that it will take too long (particularly given the affected class are not young), but the rights of the innocent vs the guilty receiving compensation is a difficult equation to balance - one without easy answers.

As I've said earlier in the thread - I would, on balance, exonerate them all - but we can't disregard the gain that this would give the guilty. It must remain part of the consideration

Yep. And I came down on the other side of this equation. But these are, properly, opinions of course. There is no obvious right or wrong.

I'd like to know what the Postmasters support group feel about how this should be handled. It would not be a single deciding factor for me, but it would weigh in balance too.

[bigbonedrawky]

I'm very sympathetic to the position that it will take too long (particularly given the affected class are not young), but the rights of the innocent vs the guilty receiving compensation is a difficult equation to balance - one without easy answers.

As I've said earlier in the thread - I would, on balance, exonerate them all - but we can't disregard the gain that this would give the guilty. It must remain part of the consideration

I think the answer to this lies somewhere between Ben Franklin and William Blackstone's thought on matters such as this.

[Red-Soldier]

Ex-Post Office boss ‘gave Fujitsu bonus contract despite warnings’

Exclusive: Whistleblowers say Paula Vennells agreed to move archive, which risked destroying data that could clear operators

The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells gave Fujitsu a bonus contract in 2013 to take over an archive of branch data, despite warnings such a move would destroy evidence that might clear operators, whistleblowers have said.

Transaction information was “replatformed” on cost grounds from a “gold standard” external storage system known as Centera to one owned by the Japanese software company running the Post Office’s Horizon IT network.

It is understood Vennells agreed to “migrate” the archive to the Fujitsu system, known as Eternus, despite warnings from at least two senior executives in the Post Office that this would make it virtually impossible to investigate branch transactions should a forensic audit be needed into Horizon’s records.

Data held on EMC Centera – a system used by HM Revenue and Customs – is immutable, meaning it could be proven that it had not been changed before any retrieval for trial. Fujitsu’s Eternus system did not offer such a level of audit integrity.

When prosecuting post office operators, investigators often relied on “filtered data” to prove their targets’ guilt, then the audit records were found to be incomplete by the time the cases were heard in the appeal courts after 2013.

Also, until 2019 the Post Office and Fujitsu had been able to falsely claim that transaction records could not and had not been changed remotely. It was only during the group litigation brought by Alan Bates and others against the Post Office that the truth emerged via a whistleblower, and the scandal of the wrongful prosecutions unravelled.

The latest development raises questions about whether the move to the in-house Fujitsu storage system was purely a cost-cutting exercise or also an act of sabotage.

Vennells, who was the Post Office’s chief executive between 2012 and 2019, is to give evidence to the public inquiry into the scandal in the spring.

Sonia Campbell, a partner at the legal firm Mishcon de Reya and who is representing Vennells at the inquiry, declined to comment.

More than 900 people were wrongfully convicted between 1999 and 2015 in part as a result of faults with the Horizon system, which was riddled with bugs and defects.

By 2013, it was in operation in 11,500 branches in the UK but the Post Office was already facing mounting questions about the safety of the convictions of branch operators based on shortfalls recorded by the accounting system.

The inquiry into the scandal, which has been running since 2021, has heard damning evidence of attempts to cover up the problems with Horizon.

A Post Office source said there had been a need to increase storage capacity in the archive in 2013 but that the decision to shift to Fujitsu’s in-house system raised serious concerns.

The source said: “Paula was told that if you do this you are going to destroy the audit trail, but Fujitsu were saying they could do the job much cheaper. Their Eternus was a good product if you don’t want any audit.

“In technical terms, Centera retains all the history, full history, for audit purposes of all the data, meta data, full transactional use, all time- and date-stamped, along with any user data, logins etc.

“Eternus just store the raw data, so it could be modified and manipulated as if stored in an open database, therefore the data has no integrity.

“Once Eternus was implemented there would be no way of proving Fujitsu’s historic manipulation of data, and by whom and with any logs associated.”

The source said of the switch to Fujitsu’s system: “It begs the question: why would you do this? Cui bono [for whose benefit] given that this was all occurring at the same time as the Post Office was asked to review 70-plus sub-postmaster cases by various MPs and Fujitsu were worried about losing control of Horizon at the time?”

An independent examination by the forensic accountants Second Sight, which was funded by the Post Office in response to pressure from MPs, reported back in July 2013 with concerns about Horizon, but it was not permitted to look into “audit and investigative processes”.

The unreliability of the Post Office’s audit trail continues to plague the organisation.

A Fujitsu software engineer, Gerald Barnes, who wrote the software to migrate the audit data from Centera to Eternus, admitted to the inquiry last month that the court of appeal examining the conviction of an operator at London’s Apex corner branch was given unreliable data last year, with 13 transactions belatedly found to be missing.

A second source, who had warned of the risks involved in migrating the audit store early in 2013, said: “Moving data to another bit of technology doesn’t sound like a big thing, but the Centera technology stored the metadata that gives the context for transactional data. If you just transfer the data it is, in effect, just a set of numbers in rows and columns.”

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We fully recognise the human impact of the Horizon scandal and reiterate our heartfelt apology for the appalling treatment of postmasters. We fully share the public inquiry’s aims to get to the truth of what happened in the past and accountability. We are confident that the inquiry will subject any material it considers to be relevant to scrutiny when it considers it appropriate to do so.”

A spokesperson for Fujitsu said the company would not respond to specific questions but repeated its previous public apology.

He said: “The UK statutory public inquiry, to which our UK subsidiary is providing full cooperation, is examining complex events that have unfolded over many years, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to this cooperation.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/13/ex-post-office-boss-gave-fujitsu-bonus-contract-despite-warnings-whistleblowers-says

[reddebs]

She's wrong un that Vennells woman and her sidekick that covered her every track, wiped her arse and probably dreamt of becoming her in a future life.

[Red-Soldier]

She's wrong un that Vennells woman and her sidekick that covered her every track, wiped her arse and probably dreamt of becoming her in a future life.

I agree.  Both are real disgusting humans.

[Nobby Reserve]

She's wrong un that Vennells woman and her sidekick that covered her every track, wiped her arse and probably dreamt of becoming her in a future life.

She's a CofE minister and almost became Bishop of London.

She probably believes she's inherently a good person (like many religious people, who think being involved in a church excuses their cuntish behaviour across general life and work)

[Fortneef]

So. Are we now in agreement?

Probably. I got a bit carried away there. Sorry.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Probably. I got a bit carried away there. Sorry.

No apology necessary, @Fortneef. It is one of those situations where we all are agreed on the facts, so it really does come down to opinion. And since there is no ideal solution, I am not even sure of my own opinion.

[Ray K]

Emily Maitlis @maitlis

Blimey this is damning - Henry Staunton - sacked post office chair - tells @thetimes why he was allegedly told to stall on sub post mmasters’ compensation payments to help Gov “ limp on” to election without financial liability ..

[Jiminy Cricket]

Emily Maitlis @maitlis

Blimey this is damning - Henry Staunton - sacked post office chair - tells @thetimes why he was allegedly told to stall on sub post mmasters’ compensation payments to help Gov “ limp on” to election without financial liability ..

Non-paywalled version of the article from The Times:

https://archive.is/9KKvt

[TSC]

No surprises that government is pushing this out for Labour to deal with.

[reddebs]

She's a CofE minister and almost became Bishop of London.

She probably believes she's inherently a good person (like many religious people, who think being involved in a church excuses their cuntish behaviour across general life and work)

Being anything to do with the church in this country is attaching yourself to one of the worst groups of abusers in our history.

She actually fits into that quite well really.

[TSC]

War of words now

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/badenoch-post-office-bullying-2914553

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/19/henry-staunton-kemi-badenoch-horizon-scandal-post-office/

[Circa1892]

Interesting she has only responded with all her allegations under Parliamentary priviledge.

[TSC]

Interesting she has only responded with all her allegations under Parliamentary priviledge.

No surprise at all that.  Guy comes into post a year ago and then forced out as the crap hits the fan for something which happened years ago.  Wonder who’s telling the truth?  He didn’t hang back, hitting back almost immediately.

[reddebs]

Interesting she has only responded with all her allegations under Parliamentary priviledge.

What's parliamentary privilege and why does it matter in this instance?

[Statto Red]

What's parliamentary privilege and why does it matter in this instance?

Parliamentary privilege means, you get legal immunity from being sued for libel & such

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the_United_Kingdom

[reddebs]

Parliamentary privilege means, you get legal immunity from being sued for libel & such

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the_United_Kingdom

Ah ok so they can say what they like no matter how defamatory and face no consequences.

[Elmo!]

Ah ok so they can say what they like no matter how defamatory and face no consequences.

Exactly but only inside the parliament. It does have it's uses, they can break gag orders for example if they think something needs to be public.

[reddebs]

Exactly but only inside the parliament. It does have it's uses, they can break gag orders for example if they think something needs to be public.

I guess that's how and why MPs think bullying is ok.

[Red-Soldier]

More revealed.

I'd be amazed if anyone is held to account, over this:

Cameron government knew Post Office ditched Horizon IT investigation

David Cameron's government knew the Post Office had ditched a secret investigation that might have helped wrongly accused postmasters prove their innocence, the BBC can reveal.

The 2016 investigation trawled 17 years of records to find out how often, and why, cash accounts on the Horizon IT system had been tampered with remotely.

Ministers were told an investigation was happening.

But after postmasters began legal action, it was suddenly stopped.

The secret investigation adds to evidence that the Post Office knew Horizon's creator, Fujitsu, could remotely fiddle with sub-postmaster's cash accounts - even as it argued in court, two years later, that it was impossible.

The revelations have prompted an accusation that the Post Office may have broken the law - and the government did nothing to prevent it. Paul Marshall, a barrister who represented some sub-postmasters, said: "On the face of it, it discloses a conspiracy by the Post Office to pervert the course of justice."

    Why were hundreds of Post Office workers prosecuted?

Senopathy Narenthiran, known as Naren, a convicted sub-postmaster from Ramsgate in Kent who joined the legal action, wiped away a tear as he learned about the information that might have helped his case.

"By knowing all this, why do we waste all our time in the prison and separate from our family? I don't know," he told the BBC. "I'm 69 years old - too old to go through all these things."

The secret investigation was uncovered through a BBC analysis of confidential government documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, from a time in 2015 and 2016 when the Post Office was under growing pressure to get to the bottom of sub-postmasters' claims of injustice.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters had been prosecuted and jailed for cash shortfalls which were in fact caused by the Horizon IT system. They had long suspected that remote tinkering may have contributed to the problem.

The documents show how the secret 2016 investigation - looking into Fujitsu's use of remote access from 1999 onwards - had come out of a review by former top Treasury lawyer Jonathan Swift QC. The Swift review had been ordered by the government, with approval from then-business secretary Sajid Javid.

It would conclude that it had found "real issues" for the Post Office.

Mr Swift had found a briefing for the Post Office board from an earlier review in 2014, carried out by auditors from Deloitte and codenamed Project Zebra, detailing how Fujitsu could change branch accounts.

Having seen that evidence, the Swift review said the Post Office must carry out a further investigation into how often and why this capability was used.

Deloitte returned in February 2016 to begin the trawl of all Horizon transactions since its launch 17 years earlier.

Ministers, including Mr Javid, were told this new work was under way to "address suggestions that branch accounts might have been remotely altered without complainants' knowledge".

But in June 2016, when sub-postmasters launched their legal action, the government was told through Post Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe that the investigation had been scrapped on "very strong advice" from the senior barrister representing them.

There is no evidence in the documents that then-prime minister David Cameron knew about the investigation or that it had been ditched.

It meant that over two years, the Post Office had spent millions of pounds on three separate reviews into remote access - Project Zebra, the Swift review and the 2016 Deloitte investigation - while publicly claiming it was impossible.

But all three were buried by the Post Office. Neither the Swift review nor Project Zebra were disclosed to sub-postmasters, depriving them of vital information that could have helped them in court; and the Deloitte investigation was halted before it could deliver its findings.
Short presentational grey line

Project Zebra, the first of the three reviews, was described as a "desktop review". The Post Office board had hoped it would give "comfort about the Horizon system" to them and others outside the business who had concerns about it.

The consultants examined Horizon documents and talked to employees at Fujitsu and the Post Office to check how the system was functioning and whether it was achieving its objectives.

Unredacted documents obtained by the BBC show that in April 2014, members of a sub-committee of the Post Office board discussed Deloitte's Project Zebra work.

The sub-committee included chief executive Paula Vennells, general counsel Chris Aujard and Richard Callard, a senior civil servant at the government body which owned the Post Office.

The next month, Deloitte submitted its full report and in June it wrote a briefing for the Post Office board, which outlined two separate ways Fujitsu could alter branch accounts. Extracts from the board briefing are quoted verbatim by the Swift review but the briefing itself has not been released.

It said the auditors had learned that authorised Fujitsu staff with the right database access privileges could use fake digital signatures or keys to delete, create or amend data on customer purchases that had been electronically signed by sub-postmasters. Fujitsu staff could then "re-sign it with a fake key".

Deloitte said Fujitsu staff had also been able to correct errors using an emergency process known as a "balancing transaction", which can "create transactions directly in branch ledgers".

It noted the process "does not require positive acceptance or approval by the sub-postmaster".

Yet the findings of Project Zebra were never disclosed to investigating accountants Second Sight who, since 2012, had been publicly tasked by the Post Office with looking in to sub-postmasters' claims.

The Post Office continued to claim for a further five years that it was impossible for remote tinkering by Fujitsu to alter cash balances in Post Office branch accounts.

In 2015, it lied to BBC executives as it sought to prevent the broadcast of the first Panorama expose of the scandal, briefing them that there was "simply no evidence" that remote tinkering by Fujitsu could have caused branch losses.

The documents that have now been analysed by the BBC reveal that following the Panorama broadcast, Post Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe wrote to the incoming chairman, Tim Parker, asking him to give the concerns about possible miscarriages of justice his "earliest attention" and take any necessary action. Business Secretary Sajid Javid approved the letter.

Mr Parker said he would undertake a review of the Horizon system and "various claims that sub-postmasters had been wrongly prosecuted as a result of faults in the system", according to a briefing sent to Mr Javid on 20 November 2015, which was heavily redacted in the released documents.

Mr Parker appointed Jonathan Swift QC and barrister Christopher Knight. They were so concerned about the implications of the Project Zebra documents, they said it was "incumbent" on the Post Office to find out how often these two means of altering branch accounts had been used, "in the light of the consistent impression given that they don't exist at all".

The Swift review, dated 8 February 2016, noted that the Post Office "had always known" about the balancing transaction capability.

It also said the Post Office may be obliged by law to show the documents to postmasters who were seeking to overturn their convictions.

In response to a recommendation in the Swift review, Deloitte was asked within days to return to the Post Office to carry out a full independent review of Horizon, following up on its work on Project Zebra.

The mammoth and expensive task was to trawl back through all the transactions since Horizon began operating - work which was anticipated to take three months.

In a letter of 4 March 2016, Post Office chair Tim Parker wrote to Baroness Neville-Rolfe about the Swift review's findings and recommendations. That included informing her about Deloitte's follow-up work.

He said it would "address suggestions that branch accounts might have been remotely altered without complainants' knowledge" and review "security controls governing access to the digitally sealed electronic audit store of branch accounts".

He added that he had "commissioned independent persons to undertake the necessary work", and in a later briefing informed the minister that this was Deloitte.

The letter did not explicitly mention Project Zebra or Deloitte's earlier findings about how branch accounts could be remotely altered.

In April, the Post Office notified the government that the sub-postmasters had begun their group legal action against it. Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Mr Javid were sent a briefing, updating them on the investigation's progress and discussing how the legal action would affect it.

The briefing, sent before a meeting with Mr Parker, was heavily redacted when it was released under a Freedom of Information Act request. But it said Mr Parker was on track to complete the follow-up work by the end of May and would update Baroness Neville-Rolfe on its progress.

However, the documents seen by the BBC reveal that in June, Deloitte's three-month investigation was suddenly stopped just before it could be completed.

On 21 June 2016, Tim Parker told Baroness Neville-Rolfe he had taken the decision on the advice of an unnamed senior barrister for the Post Office.

He told her the detailed work being carried out by Deloitte was "complex, costly and time consuming" but that good progress had been made. "I had hoped that by now I would be in a position to draw my investigation to a close," Mr Parker wrote.

"However, given the High Court proceedings to which I refer above, Post Office Limited has received very strong advice from Leading Counsel that the work being undertaken under the aegis of my review should come to an immediate end… I have therefore instructed that the work being undertaken pursuant to my review should now be stopped."

In response to the BBC's questions, Mr Parker said he had "sought and acted upon the legal advice he was given", but said it would not be appropriate to comment further while the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal was ongoing.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe told the BBC she had said publicly that she had instructed the Post Office chairman to commission an independent review, but declined to comment further while the inquiry was ongoing. Mr Javid also declined to comment because of the public inquiry.

In his High Court judgment at the end of the sub-postmasters' legal action in 2019, judge Sir Peter Fraser found the Post Office's defence claim - that Fujitsu could not insert transactions in branch accounts - was "simply untrue". He said the Post Office had "expressly denied" that remote access was possible "and that denial is now shown to be wrong".

The barrister who represented a number of wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters, Mr Marshall, told the BBC it looked as though the Post Office had conspired to pervert the course of justice.

"The important feature of all of this is that in 2014, it appears that the Post Office board was alive to the true position - that remote access by Fujitsu was possible," he said.

"And yet the Post Office board was responsible for maintaining and advancing the Post Office's defence to the sub-postmasters' claim in 2019 - that it was impossible. That was false - and, it would appear, known to be so."

Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment. Chris Aujard, then Post Office general counsel, and Richard Callard, the civil servant who represented the government on the board, declined to comment while the public inquiry was ongoing.

UK Government Investments (UKGI), the government body which owns the Post Office, addressed what the board knew about these successive reviews and investigations in an opening statement in 2022 to the ongoing public inquiry into the Horizon scandal.

It said there was no indication in the minutes of the Post Office board meeting in June 2014 that the board had received the Project Zebra briefing. UKGI said Mr Callard "does not recall ever receiving such a briefing".

The statement said the board had not asked for a copy of Deloitte's full report at the time of Project Zebra. UKGI said the board had been given an executive summary by the Post Office general counsel Chris Aujard, which was "focused on Deloitte's approach to the review but importantly did not set out its findings".

It said the board had also never received the 2016 Swift report, nor been briefed in detail on its findings. The statement said Tim Parker did not send Swift's full report to the Post Office Board and that his letter of 4 March 2016 to Baroness Neville-Rolfe did not make clear how serious the Swift review's findings were.

The revelations uncovered by the BBC also raise serious questions for the public inquiry by Sir Wyn Williams, as to whether it is adequately scrutinising what the government knew about the Post Office's internal investigations.

In UKGI's 2022 statement to the inquiry, there was no reference to Tim Parker's letter to Baroness Neville-Rolfe of 21 June 2016, notifying her he was calling off Deloitte's investigation.

In 2018, two years after completing his review, Sir Jonathan Swift, formerly First Treasury Counsel - the top civil lawyer at Her Majesty's Treasury - was appointed to be a High Court judge. He received a knighthood in the same year.

However, in the list of upcoming witnesses at the Williams inquiry, his name is absent.

Timeline: What ministers knew and when

June 2014: Deloitte submits a briefing for the Post Office board on Project Zebra, outlining how Fujitsu can alter branch accounts or change records of transactions remotely.

10 September 2015: Business Secretary Sajid Javid approves a letter from Post Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe to Post Office chair Tim Parker, urging him to take "any necessary action" about Horizon, after a Panorama whistleblower reveals how Fujitsu can remotely alter postmaster's accounts.

20 November 2015: Mr Javid is briefed that Mr Parker is undertaking a review into the Post Office IT system to look into claims that sub-postmasters have been wrongly prosecuted as a result of faults in the system.

8 February 2016: The resulting report by Jonathan Swift QC and barrister Christopher Knight recommends a full independent investigation into how often and why Fujitsu altered accounts and records "throughout the lifetime" of Horizon.

4 March 2016: Mr Parker tells Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Mr Javid he has commissioned "independent persons" to address "suggestions that branch accounts might have been remotely altered without complainants' knowledge".

21 June 2016: In a letter, Mr Parker tells Baroness Neville-Rolfe that in the light of the sub-postmasters' group legal action, on "very strong advice from leading counsel", the investigation by Deloitte has been immediately stopped. It never completes its work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68146054