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Paula Vennells, the previous Post Office chief govt, could have been instructed a few “covert operations team” that would remotely access the Horizon system and regulate branches’ accounts two years before she appeared in parliament.
In newly surfaced allegations Ms Vennells was briefed by the Post Office’s common counsel {that a} unit in Bracknell’s Fujitsu headquarters may access subpostmaster’s accounts remotely.
Tapes obtained by Channel 4 present the Post Office’s chief lawyer Susan Crichton confirming twice that Ms Vennells was conscious of the allegations.
In the audio recording – courting from 2013 – Ms Crichton could be heard saying:
“[Paula] knows about the allegation. She knows we are working on it.”
She added: “She’s got everything. The way that I’ve tried to brief Paula is, as soon as I have evidence that, you know, that there is a problem, she knows about it the next minute”.
Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells has forfeited her CBE after public dissatisfaction together with her position within the Horizon scandal
(PA)
The recording is from two years prior to the Post Office halting prosecutions in opposition to its personal sub-postmasters, and two years before the previous chief govt instructed MPs in 2015 that it was not attainable for subpostmasters’ accounts to be accessed remotely.
In written proof to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee Inquiry, the Post Office stated: “There is no functionality in Horizon for either a branch, Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts.”
More than 700 department managers across the UK had been prosecuted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 when the defective Horizon accounting software program made it look as if cash was lacking from their outlets.
Evidence of attainable remote access to the Horizon system by Fujitsu operatives has been central to the continuing Post Office scandal.
The newly uncovered tapes come from a name on which investigators from forensic accountancy agency Second Sight, together with a number of Post Office executives, had been current.
Michael Rudkin, a former Post Office union official, who was central to the invention of Fujitsu’s covert operations unit was additionally referenced on the decision.
In the tape Ron Warmington, a consultant from Second Sight, warns that Ms Vennells could possibly be questioned by Lord Arbuthnot – who campaigned on behalf of sub-postmasters – on the Bracknell operation.
“If James says something like, ‘And where are you on this assertion about the Bracknell covert operations team, as it was referred to by Rudkin?’,” Warmington asks.
“Well look, that’s a specific case. We’ll come back to it when we finish the investigation,” Ms Crichton responds.
“Yeah, well, as long as she doesn’t come back and say, ‘Look, so what’s this Bracknell issue, what is he talking about?’; ‘Oh, we’ve known about that for two months’,” Mr Warmington probes.
“She knows about the allegation. She knows we are working on it,” Ms Crichton responds.
Hundreds of subpostmasters had been wrongly convicted of stealing after the Post Office’s Horizon accounting system made it seem as if cash was lacking at their branches (Yui Mok/PA)
(PA Wire)
The tapes additionally reveal that attorneys had been keen to shut down curiosity from MPs into the unfolding scandal.
In the audio, the Post Office lawyer is heard saying: “The need to somehow have a plan to close down this process. I mean, even to the extent of stopping MPs sending cases in now. So how do we close down the MP side of the process. And what would work for MPs? And what can we sell to MPs? And how quickly can we do that?”
She continues: “So is there any way, and I’m thinking out loud here, is there any way of shutting down the MP cases, and making James and his friends happy, so they’ll just go away basically?”
Former union worker Mr Rudkin instructed Channel 4 that the tapes went a way to confirming what he had all the time identified: “The minute I first heard it, it was one of elation saying ‘Rudkin you were right!’. The second one is one of sadness thinking ‘Why did my wife and kids have to be put through this”
He continued: “It’s not just us that’s affected. It’s the whole family. The way that you are shunned within the local community – whispers, ‘No smoke without fire’. Susan’s reputation and mine for that matter, just dragged through the mire.
“And I can’t understand for the life of me why it’s taking so long for the Metropolitan Police to get on top of this. Somebody’s got to be held to account”.
Susan Crichton and Paula Vennells didn’t reply to Channel 4 News’ requests for remark.
A Post Office spokesperson stated: “We remain fully focused on getting to the truth of what happened and supporting the statutory Public Inquiry, which is chaired by a judge with the power to question witnesses under oath, and is therefore best placed to help achieve this.”
Fujitsu has been contacted for remark.
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