Ex-Post Office executive ‘gave false evidence’
She denies cover-up over software
A FOrMer Post Office executive was yesterday accused of giving false information to the High court.
Angela van den Bogerd faced the claim after denying there had been a coverup of revelations that branch accounts could be tampered with.
the public inquiry into the Horizon software scandal heard yesterday she was told as early as December 2010 that cash balances could be manipulated secretly.
But in her witness statement to the inquiry she had said she became aware of the capability of remote access only in 2011. And in her evidence to the Alan Bates vs the Post Office High court case in 2019, she claimed the first time she learned about remote access was ‘in the last year or so’.
Grilling her over this inconsistency, inquiry counsel Jason Beer Kc said: ‘that’s false isn’t it?’ She replied: ‘At the time, i didn’t think it was.’
Ms van den Bogerd, who worked at the Post Office from 1985 until 2020, was painted as one of the main villains in the itV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
Mr Beer said she had received ‘a slew of emails’ in December 2010, January 2011 and April 2014 warning her about remote access capability for Fujitsu, the Japanese firm behind Horizon.
She said she could not remember reading the December 2010 email at the time, and suggested other memos might not have ‘registered’ with her.
the inquiry was shown a 2014 email sent by Melanie corfield, in the Post Office communications team, to several top bosses including Ms van den Bogerd. it said: ‘Our current line, if we’re asked about remote access being used to change branch data or transactions, is simply “this is not and has never been possible”.’ Ms van den Bogerd said she did not recall whether she pushed back against the ‘false lines’, insisting she ‘must have missed’ the email.
When asked whether the Post Office’s aim was to hide the remote access issue, she said: ‘i was certainly not trying to cover up or suppress.’
At the start of the hearing, Ms van den Bogerd apologised for the devastation suffered by victims and their families but stopped short of apologising for her personal role in the scandal.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 due to flaws in Horizon.
Many were jailed and bankrupted, while at least four are believed to have taken their own lives. it is widely seen as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history. the inquiry continues.
‘Sent to jail or bankrupted’