Publish Workplace staff investigating subpostmasters over unexplained account shortfalls didn’t look into claims that the pc system was accountable, stated a 2013 report back to the organisation’s basic council.
Throughout the newest listening to within the Publish Workplace Horizon scandal statutory public inquiry, former Publish Workplace interim basic counsel Chris Aujard was questioned by barrister Flora Web page, representing scandal victims, about his information of the practices of the organisation’s inside investigators.
The safety division, headed by John Scott on the time, contained the workers liable for investigating subpostmasters when there have been unexplained accounting shortfalls. They might then make suggestions on whether or not to prosecute subpostmasters.
Between 2000 and 2015, greater than 700 subpostmasters had been convicted of crimes corresponding to fraud and theft, primarily based on proof from the Horizon retail and accounting system utilized in branches, which in 2019 was proved within the Excessive Court docket to be vulnerable to errors. Over 100 wrongful convictions have up to now been overturned and the federal government has launched laws to overturn the rest.
Aujard was referred to an electronic mail he obtained in January 2014 from Ron Warmington, an unbiased forensic accountant, containing a draft report that criticised the actions of the safety division. Susan Crichton, who was Aujard’s quick predecessor, had requested Warmington to do the report when she took accountability for the division, to present her a greater understanding of its actions.
In 2012, Second Sight, the place Warmington is a director, had been taken on to hold out an investigation into allegations being made in regards to the Horizon system by subpostmasters who had been blamed for unexplained account shortfalls. The report didn’t observe interviews with investigators, however was primarily based on Warmington’s in depth information of circumstances the place subpostmasters had been prosecuted after shortfalls.
The report stated Publish Workplace investigators and investigations “had been overwhelmingly targeted on acquiring an admission of false accounting” from subpostmasters or staff. “Investigators usually appeared to have paid scant consideration to the interviewee’s assertion of innocence or his/her reference to transaction anomalies. They appear to have proven little or no willingness to ascertain the underlying root reason behind any given shortfall.”
This angle appeared, in keeping with the report, “to be pushed by the will to ‘get the cash again’ from the subpostmaster” within the information {that a} false accounting conviction would supply a “comparatively cheap pathway” to that aim for the Publish Workplace.
The overwhelming impression from reviewing the transcripts of interviews is that the subpostmaster was considered as an enemy of the enterprise 2013 report by Ron Warmington, Second Sight
“In not one of the circumstances examined up to now did any investigator document something that indicated that there may be any widespread systemic downside worthy of investigation, regardless of comparable allegations being made by totally different, unconnected subpostmasters,” Warmington reported.
“The overwhelming impression from reviewing the transcripts of interviews is that the subpostmaster was considered as an enemy of the enterprise.”
The report added that the tradition within the investigating staff appeared to presume subpostmasters had been responsible when conducting an investigation fairly than the goal of in search of the reality.
“By failing to research these subpostmaster assertions and even to pay correct heed to them throughout interviews, the investigators alienated all of them. It’s that group, the subpostmasters who evidently nonetheless imagine themselves not solely to be harmless but in addition to have been cheated by the Publish Workplace, that actually have develop into enemies of the enterprise,” it continued.
