Horizon scandal: Barrister calls for police investigation into senior PO execs
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A public inquiry into the UK’s Horizon IT scandal has amassed enough evidence for police to open a criminal investigation into senior staff at the Post Office, lawyers for the wrongfully convicted postmasters have said.
More than 700 sub-postmasters in the UK were falsely prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the Post Office’s faulty computer system, Horizon. A glitch meant that thousands were accused of taking money from their tills. Some of them were driven to suicide.
Barrister Paul Marshall said he thought there was enough evidence for police to arrest former executives at the Post Office.
“On the face of it, the material is sufficient for the police to investigate whether, over a substantial period of time, the Post Office was engaged in perverting the course of justice or a conspiracy to pervert the courses of justice,” he told The Guardian.
“In my view, the Post Office was engaged in a sustained attack on the rule of law itself.”
The Post Office said: “We fully share the aims of the current public inquiry, set up to independently establish what went wrong in the past and accountability.
“We’re acutely aware of the human cost of the scandal and we’re doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past as far as that is possible. Both Post Office and government are committed to providing full, fair and final compensation for victims.”
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