Horizon IT scandal investigator tells inquiry Publish Workplace was ‘sabotaging our efforts’

An investigator appointed to look into issues concerning the Publish Workplace’s Horizon IT system in 2012 got here to imagine that he was “coping with a cover-up” by the state-owned physique, which made “numerous threats” towards him, a public inquiry has heard.

Ian Henderson, a chartered accountant, and his colleague Ron Warmington, who ran Second Sight Investigations, had been appointed in 2012 to evaluation circumstances of publish workplace operators after MPs raised issues about doable miscarriages of justice involving the Post Office’s Horizon IT system. Second Sight’s charges had been paid by the Publish Workplace, which had agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

Nonetheless, Henderson said that after the primary yr of investigation, he believed the Publish Workplace “was continually sabotaging our efforts” to hunt the reality and used claims of authorized skilled privilege – a kind of confidentiality which covers authorized paperwork – “to justify withholding paperwork from us”.

Henderson informed the inquiry that Paula Vennells, the then chief govt, “incessantly and constantly tried to steer Second Sight away from investigating potential miscarriages of justice”.

“After I first met Paula Vennells, she informed me that POL [Post Office Ltd] was the nation’s most trusted model with a historical past of over 400 years. As our work continued, I more and more shaped the view that due to this historical past, POL one way or the other felt it was above the regulation,” he mentioned.

“We tried to go the place the proof took us, however more and more we had been discovering proof of questionable conduct by POL, a few of which, for my part, was in all probability felony,” Henderson added.

He mentioned by February 2015 he now not believed the Publish Workplace was taking Second Sight’s issues concerning the Horizon IT system critically. “I felt we had been coping with a cover-up by POL and presumably a felony conspiracy,” he mentioned.

Henderson informed the inquiry that, throughout a short-lived mediation scheme for publish workplace operators arrange in 2014, Chris Aujard, the performing head of authorized on the Publish Workplace, “warned me to watch out about what I mentioned”.

Aujard had mentioned the state-owned physique “wouldn’t hesitate to take authorized motion towards me” underneath a “draconian” non-disclosure settlement (NDA) which he had signed, Henderson mentioned.

“I took this as a thinly veiled risk to bankrupt me if I continued inflicting hassle,” Henderson mentioned in his witness assertion. “I used to be involved concerning the numerous threats that had been made to me by POL regarding alleged breaches of my NDA and my duties of confidentiality … The almost certainly threats seemed to be an motion for defamation, breach of confidence or breach of contract.”

The inquiry heard that Henderson grew to become involved after reviewing the case file of Jo Hamilton, one of the vital high-profile victims of the scandal, who had been charged with theft and false accounting by the Publish Workplace.

Henderson mentioned the Publish Workplace’s determination to cost Hamilton didn’t appear to be supported by its personal inner safety report, and there was proof that “probably exculpatory materials” had not been disclosed to her at trial or subsequently. “I regarded this as both skilled misconduct or, probably, felony conduct,” he mentioned.

Henderson mentioned he believed that the Publish Workplace ultimately terminated Second Sight’s contract in March 2015 as a result of the investigators had been “getting too near the reality”.

He added: “Our overriding obligation was, in a phrase attributed to Alan Bates, to assist ‘the skint little individuals’ who didn’t have a voice and had been so badly handled.”

Warmington, the co-director of Second Sight, informed the inquiry that in 2014 he had described the Publish Workplace as having the “worst company behaviour I’ve ever come throughout”.

He mentioned Vennells appeared to have “conveyed a very rosy abstract” of Second Sight’s interim report back to the board in July 2013.

He added: “I want that I had demanded, moderately than requested, to extra incessantly see Paula Vennells, but in addition, once I was doubting whether or not the reality was penetrating by means of to her and the board, I ought to have demanded to deal with POL’s full board.”

The general public inquiry is analyzing the Publish Workplace Horizon IT scandal and why the state-owned physique hounded publish workplace operators for greater than a decade, alleging monetary shortfalls of their department accounts and criminally prosecuting tons of of individuals. It has since emerged that these monetary discrepancies had been attributable to IT bugs inside the Publish Workplace Horizon pc system.

The inquiry continues.