Post Office: Barrister warns scandal extends 'greatly' beyond Horizon
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2024
- A barrister representing sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses has told Sky News there is evidence of faults with some "third-party" services in Post Office branches.
Paul Marshall said problems with the systems, such as ATMs and lottery tickets, had been “overlooked”.
He said that “the scandal extends considerably beyond, greatly beyond, it might be said, the limited focus of bugs in Horizon”.
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Vennells should be jailed for a long time.
From what Susan Crichton says in evidence this week about her, I reckon that criminal charges for Vennells and others are now looking very likely.
I agree, she should be brought to justice, if not it gives the green light to other powerful organisations to treat their staff the same.
She won't be. The rich never are.
I think she might be, as others around her are throwing her under the bus. She is what is known as the Single Point of Blame
should be for life but that won't happen
Post office execs have apologised without coming clean on other failings.
That's not apologising, that is damage limitation.
No lessons have been learned.
The PO masters and lawyers are obliged to address Horizon issues but they are keeping quiet about other issues (that they know about).
Yep, seems these people utter their little 'sorry' as if to give more credence to the responses they are about to make, only then to prove beyond doubt that they are not genuinely sorry!
There is only one place those lessons can be learned, prison.
Not wholeheartedly 😕 though.
Lessons are never learned. Institutions mouth these words but they go back to doing what they usually do and mess up again and again
The Post Office appears to most people to be resisting and obstructing the enquiry.
Seem?
And to think Paula Vennells was preaching to her parish whilst this was going on.
Must have been hard for her not to snigger while talking about Christian values. I guess the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds salary helped.
The hierarchies of all religions are riddled with liars and hypocrites.
Re the video, I wonder if Fujitsu, formerly ICL in the UK, had any hand in the ATM issues. My professional experience of ICL software, in other sectors of the UK economy, was that it was rarely commercially released without containing "undocumented features", many of them quite serious.
Re the inquiry, having watched many witnesses over several hours, I would be very surprised if some of them did not turn out to be as guilty as a puppy sat next to a pile of poo and I cannot understand why police investigations are not already under way.
'Paula Vennells was preaching to her parish whilst this was going on...' and thanking god for her massive bonuses.
Her preyers had been answered
@@anonnemo2504 for police to go for the criminals would mean they noticed they jailed and convicted 900 people and not notice .the courts never wrong try telling a judge that.
WHERE IS THE MONEY? No one is posing this question. WHY?
The inquiry has touched on this, but I reckon its down to police/ Serious Fraud Office investigations to get under way in the light of civil and criminal appeal judgments.😊
It's my understanding that the money was placed in a suspense account and then after a time it was transferred to the Post Office profit and loss account. Thereafter the money was paid to Paula Vennels and her cronies as a nice fat bonus.
@@suziejames7510 shouldn’t have they question where is excess money coming from? While many sub PO masters were accused of stealing it? They KNEW. It is unprecedented crime.
My heart goes out to this poor man and all those who have been affected by the treachery of the establishment. It shows their utter contempt towards the working people of this country. As usual the establishment are dragging their feet in admitting any wrong doing and making amends to all those who have been so grossly mistreated. God bless all those people who have been affected.
The people that are responsible for sending the innocent subpostmasters to prison are the lowest of the low, and are clearly all lying to cover for themselves and their colleagues. They have to pay for what they have done.
This scandal extends far beyond Horizon, it goes as far as the Tory & Labour governments. The liars and crooks that they are
There is something rotten in the Establishment from weak Politicians to the Legal System the Honours System & Judiciary, arrogance incompetence greed, was there also Racism ?
Every one of these post office executives and managers and Fujitsu involved should be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, theft, perjury and jailed for the lives they have torn apart.
All of the people who have given evidence so far in the enquiry have said the same thing " I don't recall, I didn't know, it was not me ". LIES, LIES LIES.
AND EVEN MORE LIES !!!!!
The law has to b in place to do that
Decades ago I worked in a Bank. In In branch ATM discrepancies happened. The cash in the machine was counted, and the statement from the machine would show a different amount. Now imagine a wireless link to a Bank dropping out....
Dear Mr Chirag , so sorry about this , heartbreaking
I agree
This is disgusting in every way.
👏🏾👏🏾👍🏾
Hell, that (0:56) is my local post office. We had to sign a petition to get it back. I knew he was unjustly accused, but didn't realize before now that what he was accused of wasn't part of the Horizon scandal. The problem began in about 2016, when they changed their ATM from Santander to Post Office Bank. I used it many times. A lot more heads must roll beyond Vennells.
I wonder why there are so few views on this thread?
They know it was all wrong but did nothing, still no empathy or shame…..They all look guilty
And they look cold, totally lacking in empathy.
Heinous crime on the part of the Post Office. Their upper echelon, including Fujitsu, should be sentenced to jail. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If the subpostmasters were topping up the discrepencies in Horizon with their own money, then where has all of that money gone?
There must have been at least one accountant at the Post Office that noticed that they were gaining excessive levels of profit than expected for no reason.
Did all of that money go into paying shareholder dividends?..because that sounds like a job for the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service.
The CPS didn't hand over documents that proved the system had major faults. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.
Recent inquiry interview of a POL ex boss apparently admitted that the 'recoveries' probably ended up in bonus packages for the top execs for performance related aspects of their contract but there is no separate account where the 'recoveries' ended up.
One reason the influx of cash extorted from many SPM's in litigation over several years never raised a quizzical eyebrow in the finance directors office...they simply did not see it to realize there was a peculiar spike in profits seemingly unrelated to trading.
@@nikwalker7495if it was put into a suspense account initially, those accountants KNEW that money was dodgy.
It went into a separate account and then they decided to give it out as bonuses and dividends. The people that received that money are guilty of taking money by deception and receiving money that has been gained by fraud. The PO knew that there were problems, quite frankly they are the ones guilty of theft, they have stolen the money from people who did not owe them anything and then they gave it to themselves as bonuses - theft!
Exactly. As Ian Hislop says, "What happened to all the money they stole?"
I am angry and appalled on so many levels. My first thoughts have been with all the subpostmasters who have endured years of living hell. Even writing this I feel like crying for them at the injustice.
My experience of the people working in post offices has always been that they were unbelievably hard working and a huge asset to the community they served. Most will have been the hub of their community.
I have been incredibly saddened over the last 20 years to see the demise of the sub postoffices and have never been certain as to what was going on.
Now I know.
Every CEO , Director, Manager, Solicitor in the POL & Fujitsu is guilty of a gross cover-up. All their bonuses should be recovered and put into an account for the subpostmasters, if that means they will be declared bankrupt & lose their homes, TOUGH!!!!!
Plus Paula Vennels should be prosecuted along with all the others who lied.
Hopefully ending in VERY LONG jail sentences .
Fujitsu should foot the bill and compensation absolutely scandalous and Post Office officials should be jailed!
I wonder if Fujitsu, formerly ICL in the UK, had any hand in the ATM issues. My professional experience of ICL software, in other sectors of the UK economy, was that it was rarely commercially released without containing "undocumented features", many of them quite serious.
Re the inquiry, having watched many witnesses over several hours, I would be very surprised if some of them did not turn out to be as guilty as a puppy sat next to a pile of poo and I cannot understand why police investigations are not already under way.
Bankrupted, then jailed!! MM
ALL OF THEM - JAIL !
This needs to be a police investigation immediately.
👏🏾👏🏾👍🏾
Omg, disgraceful the PO responsibles need to be brought to justice and compensation given to their victims. The PO abused their position as judge and jury to protect their salaries and reputation - “the institutions of power can never be seen to be wrong“ - and they didn’t care who they crushed.
I’m pretty sure the only thing the post office is sorry for is that they have been caught lying.
I can't believe that the ATM transactions did not have sufficient logging to determine what was actually happening.
I worked on an inter-bank instant payment clearing solution, and that had logs from the sending bank, temporary logs of the transaction while it was in progress, and logs for the receiving bank when the transaction was complete. Any problem with the transaction or communication would leave a record of what happened.
Any ATM system surely must have similar logs.
Right?!
Yes!!!
That's what puzzles me too.
The money paid back by the SPMs was put into a suspense account & later on transferred to the profit account of the PO. As a result of that increased profit Executives of the PO took large bonuses illegally. Ernst & Young were the financial auditors of the PO accounts & should have queried this but failed to do so.
They can't remember they were not told, PO reduced to Dog Pile.
Yes all the accounting firms are equally culpabale
Surely POL was ‘false accounting’ when they hid all that spare cash - the fact they were telling SPMs to keep any unexplained credit means they likely were doing it at their end too.
Good point.
Who on earth are running sub post offices now, after all these terrible accusations? What is different today that anyone would take up this position?
They all need to be jailed and their pensions given to those wrongly accused
The companies involved in these issues were also responsible for other government systems. HMRC, DVLA, DWP, who knows how many errors have been made...
This is a total disgrace.
Money i didn't even have, money i had to borrow.
No words, so sorry for the innocent victims of this, let's hope government moves decisively and quickly not that money can recompense for what has been done
P.O. bled them dry before going for prosicutions and they was refused legal aid.while a sunak funded the criminals with 100 million of tax paid money.the same sunak who has companies partnerd to fijitsu by the way.no conflict of interest what so ever .
The people that knew should see prison just like their victims.
With very long sentences. Never going to happen as they know all the right people .
...thats why this inquiry is so important. All the new information trickling out, those would have fallen under the table unnoticed in a single magistrates court case for example.
ATM need to be looked into how its interlinked (certain bank(s) involved?)
It is quite clear that those in the post office responsible for prosecutions whether involving horizon or not were routinely lying to secure a conviction. That being the case, any conviction obtained in which they were involved should immediately be declared unsafe.
This is beyond words.
This is horrific, what an appalling thing to do.
Will any of those responsible go to prison?
Hope so, if they dont i wont be posting any more xmas cards etc , ecards will have to do.
No. The System looks after its own.
probably not Canada is like the UK and real criminals never go to prison here, especially if it would be embarrassing or they are well connected
If they don’t go to prison then I won’t use the post office ever again.
Post office exec don't take any accountability for there actions,they need to go to court for there involvement in the cover up which sent hundreds to jail.
Did no one check the ATM machines, I am assuming these are the stand alone machines which are filled with notes. Therefore surely there was a check of how much money was or went in, and how much is left after a days trading, against the figures for withdrawals as part of out of the audit trail. If they didn't match up, then that should have been investigated every time, not just an assumption that the SPMR is on the fiddle.😢
Since when did ATMs issue 92p withdrawals?
So the question is how many other large organisations like the electricity supply companies for example have rouge IT systems and accounts?
FAIR question.
This probably the tip of the iceberg
Rogue
@@childofthe50s53 thank
SHOCKING SHOCKING
Down the rabbit hole we go...
Well, the post office lied once and denied everything - they have the experience and they good at this, whatever their other shortcomings might be.
Despite all the lies and bluster there are some nuggets of truth - one exec said the govt were never going to abandon horizon once the contract was signed - this goes back to Blair and Mandy - POL knew this and did their best to make it work - the shiny new acquisition had to prevail ‘at all costs’. Honestly even if one of those execs had raised questions he/she would likely have been shunted out
@@PJMcInerney And then that "one" theoretical exec would still have a claim to being moral ethical, and to being proficient at their job, IF they had raised questions.
@@julierogers1155 Re morals and ethics I do agree - might have been a shot across the bow but no more than that - would not have helped the SPMs all that much - From the enquiry ' there was no way Horizon would be phased out despite it ''not being fit for purpose'' (David Mills) - 'It would have been a massive write off for the Government'
@@PJMcInerney Yes, the Government would have had to put in some effort to prove that Fujitsu's Horizon software/system was "faulty" and devious (meaning that accounts could be accessed -and changed- remotely). Would that have not led to the Government being able to demand, and obtain, a refund from Fujitsu? Fujitsu HAS TO BE liable here, yes?
All these people could have come forward and spoken at any point. They all said nothing and let people hang.
there has very much been a culture of "absolute assumption of guilty until one can conclusively prove themselves innocent" (basically the reverse of the UK Justice system) in the post office and royal mail for decades, I know this from bitter personal experience; when the Inquiry is over and conclusions / reports published, I seriously hope heads roll within post office management, their lawyers, prosecutors etc (not all of course), all those guilty must be brought to justice (after being fired first), arrested, criminally charged & hopefully convicted, some even jailed, and all those found guilty in court be forced to contribute to the compensation fund on top of any fines, costs awarded, etc; also it must be made into law that Criminal investigations be made exclusive to the Police, Government departments (HMRC, DWP, Local Councils, etc) and criminal prosecutions at the sole privy of the CPS
The Post Office is a public corporation owned by the UK government (as its single shareholder) which is deliberately dragging its feet in paying full compensation to SPMs thereby adding insult to injury to them and their families. The entire edifice is rotten to its foundations. I'll bet that none of those responsible will end up behind bars. The Establishment will close ranks and see to that. If I'm wrong, they will be held in cushy open prisons with day release. How ironic it would be if their compulsory work detail was sewing mail bags for RM.
Fujitsu has a lot to answer for as well. I wonder how many people are aware that itcurrently has contracts worth £1.4 BILLION with HMRC. If there is anything nasty lurking in the systems there it could affect an order of magnitude more people than the SPMs whose lives have been ruined in the current scandal.
This will also go far, far, beyond the Post Office to many large corporations, operating without external oversight, with no executive interest in the real-world business processes, all pinning their hopes that a 'new system' will resolve all their issues, improve performance and magically transform their off-system processes, waste and poor customer service. I have seen this first hand in the university sector where millions have been spent at each, always involving huge overspend, delays often a year, two, or three years, software suppliers trusted completely and staff told to put up with the process they are given rather than being able to raise issues.
At the heart of this are senior managers with no interest in business processes, a lack of basic management or project management skills and expertise, and inability to think critically about the needs of the business. It usually involves the guilty failing upward. I'd like to see a wide ranging audit of the university sector into mis-spending and lack of accountability, but I'm not holding my breath.
What happened to the money that disapeared from the accounts?
Bonuses .
Bonuses
The problem with a lot of this is it gets into the hands of lawyers who have only the vaguest notion of how a computer works and what can go wrong. The arguments then go off at tangents without getting to the real issues.
This was ALL about covering the Post Ofice Executives backs, and protecting their huge bonuses. These people had NO conscience or decency, how pathetic they are.
Jail jail jail jail !
Jail jail jail jail jail !!!!
People at the top of the PO ''will cooperate with the enquiry'' only because THEY HAVE NO CHOICE - As for being 'sorry', they are only 'sorry' because THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND OUT. If this had all not been discovered they would have carried on taking their bonuses and pocketing the money that wasn't theirs from the wrongly convicted SPM's.
It is NOT the Post Office that should be on trial it is the individuals who committed perjury, continuing to blame "The Post Office " as an entity will get them off the hook.
Postmasters top up data errors in the Horizon shambles with their own savings, profits surge, director’s bonuses are awarded (due to their superb skilled management), Royal awards are handled out willy-nilly……..
Is that a win-win-win outcome ?
I wonder if other businesses have been affected by these sorts of IT errors and caused similar egregious treatment of innocent staff members?
This PO scandal is absolutely appalling!
There is a saying: 'that power corrupts!' The Post Office bosses seemed to be corrupted by power and money!
The postmasters were the 'little people's against the PO hierarchy and power!
Individuals who works for the post office and Fujitsu needs to be personally criminally accountable for this. This should set a precedence that people can't hide behind corporate veils when they were personally rewarded for their fraud and victims' miseries. This has to stop and it should include politicians.
At best, we may see some lower down thrown under the bus. I've followed the enquiry daily and the intelligence level of their "investigators " is truly and staggeringly low to anyone who has worked as an investigator in a professional basis. I watched in open mouthed amazement at the low quality people they had on their books. Then came the higher ups and legal execs right now. They knew nothing, can't recall anything, and all answers are met with "I think/ to the best of my recollection/probably/ I don't recall/ I might" and so on. All weasel words and avoiding definitive answers so they can weasel back on them if evidence emerges they don't yet know. What has emerged are a gang of morally bankrupt self satisfied egotists. The whole organisation seems to have been toxic. Disturbingly, the higher up they have been, the more relaxed and arrogant they have been - clearly totally confident nothing will happen to them... and they are most likely correct because the establishment will *absolutely* not want to set a precedent of the fatcats being held responsible. Thats the very last precedent they will want to set.
It's time for a reform. The Post Office in it's current form needs to be shut down and a new service established. Regionally managed with properly employed staff. No one working currently in Post Office management in any senior level should be a part of the new service.
The Majority would like to see life without parole sentencing for everyone in the Postoffice involved or aware.
Those responsible for prosecutions, knowing full well there were problems, should be prosecuted hastily
The honest overview of what went wrong is obvious. Senior management were focused on turning the post office business around with the end benefit being grandiose bonuses and assured job secirity. Senior management ensured buy-in from every managerial level. This progressed to such a state that good people chose to close one eye to the obvious. What a sad state of affairs that otherwise good people eould sell their souls for a handful of silver.
This is easy to understand but the top shelf did not want to acknowledge this.
I wonder if Fujitsu, formerly ICL in the UK, had any hand in the ATM issues. My professional experience of ICL software, in other sectors of the UK economy, was that it was rarely commercially released without containing "undocumented features", many of them quite serious.
Re the inquiry, having watched many witnesses over several hours, I would be very surprised if some of them did not turn out to be as guilty as a puppy sat next to a pile of poo and I cannot understand why police investigations are not already under way.
This is all well and good but does not account for people seeing their balances altered as they watched. Some. One was actually making that shortfall using the link from Fujitsu. All this distraction is intended to detract from the fact that Fujitsu were proved to alter balances and take money from postmasters. When is this going to be investigarpted ???
‘The sub postmasters were entirely responsible for any losses. It’s in the contract’. This was the line blindly followed by the post office. They repeatedly ignored the complaints from SPMs regarding the IT systems and pursued them on the basis of an unfair contract.
No they were not.
The contract says 'The subpostmaster is responsible for all losses caused through his negligence, carelessness or error and also for all losses caused by his assistants...”
'His negligence, carelessness or error' is not the same as 'losses caused by the Horizon system or any other IT system. The PO took money from them fraudulently from the very start.
@@vanessalochrie3680 Totally agree 100%
Anyone in PO that knew about its financial faults on horizon and others…deserves to be in prison. They lied.
A vicious and nasty business!
Shocking absolutely shocking.
So how deep does the rabbit hole go ? is the whole post office system corrupted' as well as horizon ??
I am at a loss as to why the PO took these cases to court. Disclosure under CPIA 1996 require the prosecution to disclose anything which assists a defendant or which undermines their position. Knowing this, everyone involved in the decision NOT TO disclose known weaknesses and to proceed anyway is liable to prosecution for Perverting the Course of Justice. That’s everyone from investigators to senior executives who had the final say on whether to proceed. Deliberately suppressing material harmful to your case was criminal then and is criminal now. Someone’s going down over this.
Doubt that very much . Vennels will as the sacrificial lamb , but the rest will go free and the establishment will hope public will have a short memory .
why is it no one with evidence and proof ever held accountable and punished, there is inquiries after inquiries verdict ? Another inquiry of what to do now no one as ever stood trial stealing these good people’s personal money isn’t that theft does any one get justice?
They were all complicit in the lies...
This situation is truly shocking, how could these managers live with themselves?
Sooner or later we will learn about unsafe convictions in the NHS too!
Quelle surprise .. we the little people are being down trodden by corporations and un caring management.
Not just the PO the privatised utilities are robbing us with false accounting as well as inflated prices.
ALL the time .
Convictions against sub postmasters should be quashed and prosecutions be brought against Post Office executives and their lawyers.
There is no doubt the whole system issue is insanely wrong. But what made the senior executives keep hiding the faults? This is more than legal and individual claims. They could have had a personal interest in Horizon failing?
BONUSES silly .
Yet another sickening display of post office greed and lies. It no longer shocks me after watching the enquiry into the post office crimes.
No wonder Camelot , didn't fight their ousting, they mysteriously backed away from their initial appeal, who would do that if your a business who had potential profit's to gain, what were they shown that stopped them from fighting Allwyn ?
Confidence in the Justice System & The Government Labour or Conservative will only be regained when all the people concerned in this horror face criminal charges of the most serious nature
Lets not forget that, if a Post Office was robbed then the SMP was also held liable. They didn't find this out until it was too late and no one had insurance.
I've been wondering about all the other countries that were using the same systems. I doubt this was isolated to the UK
I am conflicted. Avoid the Post Office to punish the PO..
Not avoid the Post Office so as not to further cause hardship to the subpostmasters.
Why aren't they all on remand
So will the courts and judges also be held accountable for passing judgements based on false evidence???
Fujitsu are still getting Government contracts! WHY?
Its not just postman pat it's also his black and white cat
Vennels and all others involved in this deception, must be jailed for a very long time. Their titles, and all assets should be sold off to be added to the compensation that the sub post masters truly deserve. Let them know how it feels to lose everything!
Vennells should be put on trial in front of the whole nation for them to watch and then sentanced to slop out for the rest of her days..too many of these millionaire company execs get away with it and now here's a chance to to make an example..
It’s time all ministers were post masters were effected from around the country should get involved as the post office gang is now making a mockery out of enquiry ! Ministers should be supporting the people now !!!
Yes it does, MP's and Starmer who did ask questions and never asked the questions why so many Postmasters and Mistresses were being charged.
Talking to the post office about Horizon is rather like talking to a member of the flat earth society.
There so sorry they've been found out
All these execs need jail time
And lengthy time .
PO knew there were problems with the systems as payment of these 'shortfalls' resulted in very large 'non-assignable' receipts which in turn massively increased profits, so bonuses....
not enough accountability with any directorships in britain, yet they affect the lives of so many. Staff, customers and public.
I'm a software guy, and these are very simple systems. That aside the PO had that mindset to chase SPMs and with it pulling in the various layers of 'professionals'. Mr Bates will raise a lot of money for the private procecutions. The focus will hopefully be to take the money off these people - forget jail - the money👏
This goes way further than post office
It's a strange one.
When are people who know what was happening going to jail?
who'd do any business with this level of morals?
These people should be in prison. No wonder Vennells is playing the religious card, she'd better have some asbestos pants.
But surely people that withdrew money must have know their accounts were not updated and should have reported it to the post office and that is theft?
The PO is beyond help now, these execs. Are either epically incompetent or deliberately fraudulent, either way prison feels like the right place for the exec board to spend their remaining days, but we all know that will never happen.
Too many powerful friends in the right places .
Expose these corrupt people they are in places of authority, but have no conscience or empathy for the harm they cause others. All people are vulnerable, Vennells and others in the know got away with it for so long!
PO must have such a crappy Accounting system that they could not identify extra moneys in the account that PO said was missing. If an accounting system cannot identify exactly where the money is or is not it should be thrown out years ago.