... AND THE DAME

NAME: Dame Moya Greene AGE: 65 ROLE: Chief executive, Royal Mail TENURE: 2010-2018 POST OFFICE EARNINGS: £11.5million

Canadian-born Moya Greene was in charge of the royal Mail for eight years.

although royal Mail, which delivers letters and parcels, is now separate from the Post office – which runs the network of branches and services – her reign included a two-year period when both were part of the same empire.

When dame Moya was in control of the Post office, the scandal over the subpostmasters had been bubbling for several years.

in 2009, just before she arrived, a group of former sub-postmasters told their story in trade magazine Computer Weekly and cases began to appear in local papers. The BBC reported on one female sub-postmaster, Seema Misra, 44, from Surrey, was pregnant when she was jailed for 15 months in 2010 for stealing £74,000.

This week, dame Moya and her chairman were accused of continuing to prosecute postmasters after directors were told Horizon could be to blame for shortfalls in branch accounts.

Warnings included the official audit report by Ernst and Young from 2011, which identified weaknesses in the Horizon system that could ‘lead to... unauthorised or erroneous transactions’.

but dame Moya accepted assurances from the bosses of the Post office that the handling of the cases was all above board.

in hindsight, had she insisted on a full investigation, the misery might have been halted years earlier.

a year later in 2014, when Paula Vennells still maintained there were no faults in the Horizon system, dame Moya was named the Sunday Times business Person of the Year.

dame Moya, who has an adult daughter from her first marriage, wed dr roger Springall in 2014 and lives in Fulham, west London.

after being approached by the Mail, she made no comment. When approached for comment ahead of publication Horizon’s architect, Fujitsu, said it was conducting a ‘thorough review’.