2023-09-18 20:30:38
This is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent UK history. The British government announced Monday that former postal agency directors accused and sometimes wrongly imprisoned for theft could receive 600,000 pounds (nearly 700,000 euros) each in compensation. “This is about righting a wrong and providing some form of relief to those who are unfairly implicated in this scandal,” Postmaster General Kevin Hollinrake said in a statement.
From the late 1990s, the Post Office began installing Horizon accounting software, but flaws in its programming led to deficits in branch accounts. Postal service executives, refusing to acknowledge problems with the software, forced postal workers to repay accounting shortfalls, leading to many of their ruin.
A system bug
Between 1999 and 2015, some 700 Post Office branch directors were prosecuted, to the point of sometimes having their lives shattered, on the basis of information from this computer system installed by Fujitsu. But in December 2019, a High Court judge ruled that this system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and that there was a “significant risk” that it was the cause of deficits in the accounts of the postal branches.
Already 86 convictions have been quashed in this case and £21 million has been paid in compensation to the employees affected. The agency directors concerned can choose to refuse the offer and pursue legal proceedings, the executive specifies in its press release. And those who have already received compensation or entered into an agreement with Post Office for less than 600,000 pounds will receive the difference.
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