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Post Office worker who allegedly told staff to destroy evidence could return, as police investigate

Post Office to allow employee, who allegedly told staff to destroy evidence of possible interest to public inquiry, to return to work during police investigation

Karl Flinders
By
Published: 21 Oct 2024 14:45

A suspended Post Office manager was allowed to return to work while the Metropolitan Police investigate allegations that they instructed staff to destroy evidence that could have been of interest to the ongoing public inquiry.

A document made public by the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon Scandal reveals more details of an internal investigation into the allegation, known as Project Acer.

As Computer Weekly first reported earlier this month, in her witness statement, the Post Office’s current company secretary, Rachel Scarrabelotti, wrote of “allegations that a senior Post Office member of staff had instructed their team to destroy or conceal material of possible interest to the inquiry, and that the same individual had engaged in inappropriate behaviour”.

It was later revealed it is now a police investigation. The Post Office originally said it informed police, but according to the latest document to be made public, it was the inquiry that informed the Met Police that “there may have been an Inquiries Act offence or an offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice”.

At the time the latest document was written, in August, the Post Office said it was “collating, analysing and passing material to the Met, who are looking to understand the 2,000 hardcopy files that relate to this allegation and to understand and identify any possible interference with them or a motive to do so”.

There were also allegations that the same person was “racially discriminatory towards South Asian subpostmasters and Post Office staff”. According to the Post Office internal document, after it concluded there was insufficient evidence to support this second allegation, the Met police agreed that the Post Office employee under investigation should be able to return to work because “there was no reasonably known end date likely for the potential criminal issue carried by the Met”.

In the document, the Post Office said it then began “discussions” about “where in the organisation the staff member will return to work and what controls are needed whilst the Met consider their view of evidence”.

Reporting obligations

Computer Weekly asked the Post Office whether the worker had returned to work, but it said: "Post Office declines to comment on individual employment matters."

The Post Office document said the Met Police “accept that they have the reporting obligations to the inquiry, not the Post Office”, and that “no reasonable assessment of end date is possible as the Met control this”.

The Met first started looking into the actions of Post Office and Fujitsu staff in January 2020, following the 2019 High Court case that proved accounting losses blamed on subpostmasters were caused by bugs in the Horizon system installed in Post Office branches.

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).

• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •

• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •

• Also read: Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means huge taxpayers’ bill •

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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