A British postal scandal ruined hundreds of lives. The government plans to try to right those wrongs
World
A British postal scandal ruined hundreds of lives. The government plans to try to right those wrongs
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he will introduce measures to reverse the convictions of more than 900 Post Office branch managers wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system in what is considered one of the gravest injustices in the nation’s history.
The announcement Wednesday follows a TV docudrama on the wrongdoing that created a huge surge of public support for the former postmasters who have spent years trying to reclaim lives ruined by the scandal.
“This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” Sunak said. “People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. The victims must get justice and compensation.”
Lawmakers said they would provide compensation to those who had been convicted. Some also called for bringing those to justice who were responsible for the wrongdoing.
Some things to know about the scandal:
WHAT HAPPENED
After the Post Office rolled out the Horizon IT system, developed by Japanese company Fujitsu, in 1999 to automate sales accounting, local Post Office managers began finding unexplained losses they were responsible to cover.
The state-owned Post Office maintained Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty. Between 2000 and 2014, some 900 postal workers were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting, with some convicted and imprisoned and others forced into bankruptcy.
In total, over 2,000 people were affected by the scandal. Some committed suicide or attempted it. Others said their marriages fell apart and reported becoming community pariahs.
A group of postal workers took legal action against the Post Office in 2016. Three years later the High Court in London ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and that the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of the system.
“Failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court,” Justice Timothy Holroyde said.
