Post Office contacts over 500 subpostmasters doubtlessly wrongly prosecuted for monetary crimes

The Post Office is contacting 540 of us it will additionally own wrongly prosecuted for monetary crimes.

A additional 100 of us were known and the Post Office is looking for extra recordsdata.

They would also were wrongly convicted of crimes such as false accounting and theft after being blamed for unexplained losses that were induced by laptop errors.

Here’s segment of a scandal that is 2 a long time primitive, having begun when the Horizon laptop machine used to be launched to Post Office branches in 1999-2000.

In 2009, a Laptop Weekly investigation revealed the reports of seven former subpostmasters whose lives were devastated after they were blamed for unexplained cash shortfalls (see field below for Laptop Weekly’s coverage of the sage since 2009). Some subpostmasters were sent to detention center and plenty extra own lived with criminal recordsdata for a long time.

Final month, 39 former subpostmasters had their criminal convictions quashed by the Court docket of Allure. They joined six whose convictions were overturned at Southwark Crown Court docket in December 2020.

There are one more 38 conditions with the Court docket of Allure, and about 20 are being reviewed by the Prison Cases Review Price (CCRC).

The Post Office is contacting subpostmasters following a review of relevant historical prosecutions since 1999. This work is being conducted by criminal law specialist Peters & Peters Solicitors, with better than 60 barristers reviewing millions of documents to identify any materials that ought to be disclosed to these historically prosecuted.

A Post Office spokesperson acknowledged: “The Post Office sincerely apologises for extreme historical mess ups. We continue to blueprint shut decided action for folk affected.

“Besides beefy cooperation with the CCRC’s review, Post Office has made strenuous efforts to identify those that were historically convicted and a close put up-conviction disclosure exercise is taking position to identify and expose all materials which could additionally impact the safety of these convictions.”

A full of 736 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office, in step with Horizon evidence, between 1999 and 2015. Talking to Laptop Weekly in a recent interview, Helen Pitcher, chairman on the CCRC, acknowledged it used to be that it’s doubtless you’ll presumably presumably additionally mediate of that the the leisure of these conditions, where subpostmasters were prosecuted in step with Horizon evidence, could also come forward. “If they carry out, here goes to be immense,” she added.

Pitcher explained that it doesn’t matter what of us pleaded guilty to, or were prosecuted for – if the prosecution used to be in step with evidence from the Horizon machine, they would also come forward. Any unique appellants could also ask their conditions to be dealt with sooner than the initial groups, she acknowledged.

In accordance to Pitcher, the CCRC will be ready to review conditions sooner now it’s miles aware of what it’s purchasing for, and the statutory physique will review person conditions quite than a gargantuan group. “This vogue we can spread it across extra of our of us,” acknowledged Pitcher.

Any one who used to be prosecuted by the Post Office or Royal Mail Team of workers after July 1999, and who believes the prosecution case relied on Horizon evidence, can originate contact by emailing [email protected].

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