FactualHundreds of British postal workers have been wrongly sentenced by the courts, some of them to prison, for theft. In question: a software of defective accounts set up in 1999. If the government has just launched a public inquiry, the financial compensation seems very low for the victims.
This is the unbelievable story of a horrific series of miscarriages of justice. The largest in contemporary UK history which lasted for nearly two decades. Because of bugs in accounting software – Horizon, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu on behalf of the Post Office, the British post office, a public company – hundreds of innocent people have been charged.
As soon as it was put into service in 1999, the software displayed unexplained differences between the receipts and the sales made by the managers of the agencies. When the latter do their accounts, tens, or even hundreds, of pounds of turnover are sometimes missing from the fund.
Instead of looking at software and trusting managers, Post Office leaders are launching audits, demanding refunds and even suing hundreds of postal workers: 736 of them are convicted of fraud and/or theft , some even receiving prison sentences. Lives are shattered, families torn apart, reputations destroyed.
At the end of a legal battle launched in the early 2010s, 555 postal workers grouped together within the collective Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance obtained, at the end of 2019, a judgment from the British Supreme Court in their favor: it points to the defective nature software, paving the way for retrials.
Very little contact between them
No official of Fujitsu or the post office has been indicted, while a public inquiry decided by the Johnson government to “learn lessons” of the scandal began hearing victims on February 14. The auditions lasted a fortnight in London and continued from 1er march in Cardiff, capital of Wales. Tracy Felstead, incarcerated in Holloway Prison (north London) in 2002 aged 19, gave evidence on February 26. Joined by M The magazine of the Worldshe tells : “I was charged with stealing 11,503 pounds and 28 pence [près de 14 000 euros] by the Post Office. Since the first day [où les erreurs comptables sont apparues]I was guilty in their eyes, they were just asking me what the money had been used for, I was sentenced to six months in prison”, she slips, her voice firm despite her ordeal.
“I have attacks of paranoia, I find it difficult to trust people. » Tracy Felstead
How could the employees and managers not know that they were hundreds in the same case? Postal executives consistently claimed that their accounting problems were unique. For their part, the managers were all franchisees, so very little contact between them. And the media did not take an interest in their stories until late: the specialized media Computer Weekly is the first to focus, in 2009, on Horizon software bugs.
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