Britain's deranged Post Office scandal, wherein hundreds of postal workers were falsely accused of stealing money because of a faulty computer accounting system and in many cases imprisoned, is finally exploding in the wake of "new revelations": even though there's no question they are innocent, only a handful have been exonerated and many are still on the hook.
What is the Post Office Horizon IT scandal all about?
All you need to know about one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in UK history
The Post Office scandal involves miscarriages of justice involving hundreds of innocent people who were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting.
It has been going on for over 20 years, with the Post Office accused of a cover up after it repeatedly failed to disclose key evidence.
The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry and court cases have heard that at least 60 subpostmasters have died without seeing justice or compensation, and at least four took their own lives.
funfact
The Horizon system is still used by the Post Office, which describes the latest version as "robust"
https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/en/horizon-scandal-pages/faqs
Why are people talking about the Post Office scandal now?
An independent public inquiry has been examining the treatment of sub-postmasters, compensation and the Horizon system. It began in February 2021
Mr Bates vs The Post Office - an ITV drama broadcast in early January - thrust the issue back into the spotlight, with another 50 potential victims coming forward.
The Horizon IT scandal, frequently called the largest miscarriage of justice in British history, is back in the headlines thanks to a prime-time ITV dramatisation. The resulting surge of interest has led to Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, agreeing to return her CBE. But there’s also a technical underside to the very human story of power run rampant.
How the Post Office’s Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown
Now claw back Vennells’s bonuses from the Post Office. The rules allow it
Clauses in the former CEO’s contract could easily be enforced – but the whole rotten saga goes deeper
Post Office scandal: Hundreds could have convictions overturned this year
Ahead of the public inquiry into the affair resuming on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons on Wednesday that those previously convicted in England and Wales would be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67932595
The Scottish government also announced similar plans for those convicted in Scotland, which has a separate legal system.
Chris Mason: Justice at last, but plenty more questions remain
Fujitsu Bugs That Sent Innocent People to Prison Were Known ‘From the Start’
Software flaws were allegedly hidden from lawyers of wrongly convicted UK postal workers.
https://www.wired.com/story/uk-post-office-scandal-fujitsu-bugs-known
Nine hundred people have had their lives blighted, even destroyed.
At the heart of it all is a brutal corporate cover-up of a broken IT system.
The mainstream media is trying to make up for lost time by asking the usual questions: who inside Fujitsu knew what when, who decided the strategy, how culpable is the company for compensation, did its people lie, and so on. All good questions. None is the big one.
A princely paradox
ICYMI
4 days ago
Fujitsu has written to UK Government to confirm it will no longer tender for business in the public sector amid the ongoing inquiry into the Post Office scandal – weeks after winning a £485 million ($614 million) contract.
A key element of the scandal – in which 736 managers of local Post Office branches were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame – is when the Post Office understood that the Horizon electronic point of sale and accounting system from Fujitsu could be accessed remotely without branch staff's knowledge.
Reports suggest the Post Office knew from at least 2012
https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/07/second-sight-were-told-about-remote.html
also Northern Ireland handed Fujitsu a contract, dec 2023, worth £485 million following a competition in which no other suppliers submitted final bids for the work.
https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/037794-2023
only one company made a formal bid for the contract. Despite the apparent lack of competition, the authority awarded the work to Fujitsu.
Politicians and media pundits have questioned why Fujitsu continues to win billions of pounds in work after some of the victims had convictions quashed in 2019.
but here we are 2023/24 and they still get contracts paid for by taxpayers
How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/11/fujitsu_public_procurement/
Post Office bosses secretly decided in April 2014 to sack forensic accountants who had found bugs in their IT system, documents obtained by the BBC show.
They also reveal the government had knowledge of the decision, taken by a Post Office board sub-committee, codenamed "Project Sparrow".
@ecksmc sounds like those bugs are going to send some more people to jail.
@b4cks4w one can hope
BUT i highly doubt the right people will get punished for the misery they have inflicted on so many families
yup Labour as well as Tories and especially the labour leader who was former Chief Prosecutor
@ecksmc I feel like Fujitsu should have to pay all the damages to all the people they harmed, and the state as well, before they should be allowed to get any more business, at the very least.
the decision to overturn the convictions through an Act of Parliament as "unprecedented" and said it had not been taken lightly, given its potential ramifications on the legal system.
Mr Hollinrake said the move applying to England and Wales "raises important constitutional issues" around the independence of the courts, which are normally the authority that would overturn a conviction.
The minister also accepted the new law would risk seeing people who were genuinely guilty of a crime pardoned