2024-01-09 20:03:15
Lee Castleton is still angry. “We were ostracized in our village of Bridlington. We were mistreated in the street. On the school bus, a young boy spat on my daughter because he thought her father was stealing money from the elderly,” he told the BBC.
Wrongly accused in 2004 of having stolen €29,000 from the cash register of the British Post Office, for which he had purchased the franchise nine months earlier, he was ordered on appeal to pay €373,000 in legal costs. Ruined, he had to fight for twelve years for the High Court of Justice to clear his name, and that of 554 other defendants. In fact, it was the software used by the Post Office which had caused the disappearance of the amounts in the accounts.
Sunday January 7 and Monday January 8, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak indicated that he wanted to quickly resolve the case of the 800 post office managers prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 by the Post Officethe public postal operator. “It is important that these people now get the justice they deserve, he pointed out. Everyone has been shocked in recent days at what a terrible miscarriage of justice this is. » In September, the government announced that each of them would receive €700,000 in compensation. But to date, only 93 convictions have been overturned and little money has been paid.
The Prime Minister’s intervention is linked to the broadcast last week of a television series on this scandal. The affair began in 1999 with the deployment within post offices, 99% of which are franchised, of a new accounting program called Horizon and created by the Japanese Fujitsu. Bugs quickly appear in the accounts of thousands of them.
Hundreds of shattered lives
But instead of questioning its program, Post Office accuses those responsible of theft. “This is not just a computer problem, but also a human problem, recalls Lee Castleton: people made decisions based on data they probably knew was wrong and took others to court! »
At least 736 post office managers were wrongly convicted, including some to prison terms. That’s hundreds of lives shattered. Overwhelmed, some committed suicide. Today, victims and politicians are demanding accountability from the former managers of Post Office but also from Fujitsu, which could be pushed to pay a significant part of the compensation. Victims whose number is expected to grow: 50 people have contacted lawyers since the series aired last week.
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