Post Office acted like ‘mafia gangsters’
POST OFFICE investigators were accused of behaving like “mafia gangsters” as their “bullying” tactics were laid bare at the public inquiry into the scandal.
The inquiry into the Horizon scandal heard that Stephen Bradshaw, a security manager who helped prosecute nine sub-postmasters, forced one disabled postmistress to use a parcel lift and called another a “bitch”.
The “intimidating” tactics of Mr Bradshaw, who is still employed by the Post Office, were revealed as Downing Street said that the bill for compensating wronged sub-postmasters will top £1 billion.
Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said that the Prime Minister “fully intends” to pursue Fujitsu for reparations to cover the cost, should it be found culpable in the scandal.
The Japanese firm’s faulty Horizon accounting software wrongly made it look like money was missing from Post Office accounts, resulting in more than 900 branch managers being prosecuted for financial crimes, with more than 700 convictions.
Executives and investigators who were handed bonuses for convicting innocent sub-postmasters may also have to repay the cash, a spokesman for Mr Sunak said yesterday.
The Daily Telegraph also reveals today that the Post Office avoided investigating issues with Horizon over fears it would undermine prosecutions five years before the witch-hunt ended.
As the public inquiry resumed yesterday for the first time since the broadcast of an ITV drama that reignited the scandal, Angela van den Bogerd, who was in charge of handling complaints to the Post Office about Horizon at the height of the prosecutions, broke cover for the first time.
She claimed that the depiction of her in Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which showed her hounding the widow of a postmaster who took their own life, was not accurate.
Mr Bradshaw, who has been at the Post Office since 1978, denied that “investigators behaved like Mafia gangsters looking to collect their bounty with the threats and lies”.
The claim was made by Jacqueline Mcdonald, who denied responsibility for a supposed shortfall of more than £94,000 from her Post Office branch.
When Mr Bradshaw accused her of telling him a “pack of lies”, she responded: “No I haven’t told you a pack of lies because I haven’t stolen a penny.”
Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, said that Mr Bradshaw’s words sounded “somewhat like language you might see in a 1970s television detective show”.
Ms Mcdonald was jailed in 2011 and
sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to theft and false accounting over losses recorded by Horizon at the Post Office branch she ran in Broughton.
Her conviction was overturned just over a decade later.
Rita Threlfall, who is wheelchair dependent, said she was put in a “tiny parcel lift” as she could not take the stairs to a room where she was interviewed by Mr Bradshaw in August 2010.
“Upon arrival, they left my husband and me in a hallway,” her witness statement said.
“We asked for a chair and never received one. I ended up having to sit down on the stairs.
Ms Threlfall, 65, was fired from her job as postmaster at Ford Road Post Office, Litherland, and charged with false accounting and theft over a £35,000 shortfall at her branch caused by a faulty IT system. Her conviction was later overturned.
“The interview room was up the stairs. I told them there was no way I could make it up the stairs. In order to make it to the interview room, I was placed in a tiny parcel lift.”
She is “still shaken” by the experience and suffers “crippling anxiety and depression” which “arises in large part from the way in which [Mr Bradshaw] treated her,” the inquiry heard.
Shazia Saddiq, another former postmistress, said she received “intimidating” calls from the investigator, who
called her a “b----” on one occasion in November 2016.
She told the hearing: “Stephen Bradshaw called me and I refused to speak to him because I did not know who he was or who he worked for.
“In that telephone call...he called me a b---- which I found extremely distressing.”
Mr Bradshaw refuted the succession of claims, saying that Ms Threlfall was taken to her interview in a “wheelchair accessible” lift rather than one used for post and that Ms Saddiq’s claims that he “hounded” her were “completely untrue”, insisting he would always identify himself during phone calls.
His appearance came as a leaked letter revealed that the Crown Prosecution
Service admitted it may have been involved in 99 Post Office prosecutions involving the defective system.
The figure suggests that more sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the CPS while Sir Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions than previously thought. It came as Downing Street yesterday opened the door to pursuing former Post Office investigators for financial redress once the inquiry is over.
The Telegraph reported earlier this week that Post Office investigators were offered cash incentives for every postmaster conviction they secured during the scandal.
Asked whether they should be forced to repay their bonuses, Mr Sunak’s spokesman said: “We will use the facts
established by the inquiry to hold those individuals and businesses, should they be found culpable, to account whether it be financially, legally or otherwise.”
No 10 is also looking at options to pursue Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company, for cash to help cover the £1bn cost of payouts to postmasters.
Mr Sunak announced on Wednesday that he will issue a blanket exoneration, with sub-postmasters receiving £600,000 in compensation in exchange for signing a document declaring their innocence.
Chris Jackson, partner at Burges Salmon LLP, which replaced Herbert Smith Freehills as the Post Office’s legal representative from September last year will appear at the inquiry today.