Wrongly convicted Post Office subpostmasters fight for justice amid Horizon Fujitsu scandal
Source: The Guardian
The UK Government has announced that hundreds of innocent postmasters who were wrongfully convicted due to the Horizon Scandal will be cleared after emergency laws were announced.
The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice within the United Kingdom. Whilst addressing the House of Commons, the Prime Minister announced an additional £75,000 would be paid to each of the victims and confirmed that £150 million had already been paid to those who had been affected. Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake, added that £1 billion has been budgeted for total compensation payments.
The compensation is for those who were prosecuted for alleged fraud between 1999 and 2015, the vast majority of who were wrongly accused. Between the aforementioned years, 736 sub-postmasters were subjected to prosecutions, with a total of 230 employees being sentenced to jail on false charges of theft, fraud and false accounting. The prosecutions occurred at the fault of Horizon, a digital accounting system installed by Fujitsu, a multinational Japanese tech corporation. The software stated that many post offices had cash falls, when in fact there were none. This false data led to more than 900 being prosecuted, causing extreme financial and personal loss.
Despite the trouble, Fujitsu have been paid over £95 million to continue running the software in branches. Pressure is mounting on the government to review the decision, especially as the company has won more than £2.04 billion in new contracts since the initial legal ruling in 2019.
Many sub-postmasters are not convinced by the government’s plans. Noel Thomas, who was wrongly jailed for a shortfall of £48,000, stated that the government has “promised a hell of a lot” but nothing has come from it. The compensatory scheme also has not revealed how much will come from the taxpayer and how much will be paid by Fujitsu.