No fraud charges until 2026, Met chief admits
POST Office officials may not face charges of fraud and perverting the course of justice until 2026, Britain’s top police officer has admitted.
Sir Mark Rowley has told hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing that it will be years before they see justice, with detectives unable to launch a
national criminal inquiry until ‘at least’ 2026.
The Metropolitan Police commissioner said his officers had been looking at the matter for some time, but an exhaustive national investigation is needed to determine whether crimes have been committed.
Detectives will have to trawl through tens of millions of documents to gather evidence of potential offences in wrongful convictions across the country.
But this will happen only after the public inquiry into the scandal that is due to publish its findings late next year.
Sir Mark warned victims who have already waited decades for justice that ‘it won’t be quick’, adding: ‘To prove this to a criminal standard is different to what’s in a documentary.’ He described the scandal – which was brought to life by ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office – as a ‘ghastly story’, but said officers would have to prove ‘deliberate malice’ by officials rather than just ‘incompetence’ if criminal charges are to be brought.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of stealing between 1999 and 2015 after the defective Horizon accounting system, developed by Fujitsu’s ICL business, made it look like money was missing at their branches.
The Post Office also forced at least 4,000 branch managers to pay back cash based on the flawed data.
Sir Mark told LBC radio: ‘It’s a ghastly story, isn’t it? And I’ve been following it for some time because the Met has had a limited investigation referred to it a couple of years ago. We’re now working with police forces across the country to pull together what will
‘Tens of millions of documents’
have to be a national investigation. There are tens of millions of documents to be worked through in a criminal investigation.
‘And of course we’ve got to do that following on behind the public inquiry, which I think finishes at the end of this year, but won’t publish until late next year.
‘So this is going to be a big detective team, probably many tens of officers doing that.’
He added: ‘I think at the core of this you’ve potentially got fraud, in terms of false documents, if it’s for financial purposes.
‘And you’ve potentially got perverting the course of justice, because if people have deliberately set in train evidence into a legal process, which they know is false, that would be perverting the course of justice.
‘To prove this to a criminal standard is different to what’s in the documentary. Clearly we have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, so really it’s 99.9 per cent, that individuals knowingly corrupted something.
‘So that’s going way beyond incompetence, you have to prove deliberate malice, and that has to be done very thoroughly with an exhaustive investigation. So it won’t be quick. But the police services across the country are live to this and we will do everything we can do to bring people to justice, if criminal offences can be proven.’
Sir Mark revealed Met officers were still only taking ‘initial investigative steps’ despite the case being referred to the force in 2020 by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Two people have been interviewed under caution but nobody has been arrested since the investigation was launched into potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Sir Mark added: ‘We’ve got tens of millions of documents ingested into our system, giving a sense of the scale you have to work through. It’s not a straightforward case.’