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Who is the subject of the Post Office’s Project Tiger investigation?

The Post Office is listening to a campaigner’s complaints almost a decade after ignoring his more serious accusations and warnings

Karl Flinders
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Published: 28 Oct 2024 16:00

The Post Office set up an internal project to specifically investigate its own handling of requests from a Post Office scandal campaigner, but this type of introspection came years too late to enable any meaningful action.

During a recent public inquiry hearing, a document from August 2024 revealed the internal investigation, known as Project Tiger, being carried out by the Post Office.

It is investigating recent complaints from former subpostmaster Tim McCormack, regarding how his freedom of information requests have been dealt with. This is a far cry from how it handled his more serious allegations almost a decade earlier.

During a recent hearing, a document titled Post Office ad hoc board report was revealed, outlining the internal investigations underway at the Post Office as of August this year.

They included Project Acer, an investigation into a manager who allegedly instructed staff to destroy material that could be of interest to the public inquiry, and Project Willow, which alleges that former transformation boss Chris Brocklesby misrepresented the off-the-shelf option to replace Horizon.

It also revealed Project Alder, an investigation into allegations that contractors working on processing subpostmaster compensation schemes were deliberately going slow to extend their contracts, and Project Phoenix, investigating whether current Post Office staff were involved in the investigations and wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters.

The Tiger in the room

Then there’s Project Tiger. The investigation, overseen by acting CEO Neil Brocklehurst, was set up to look into complaints from McCormack about the Post Office’s handling of his recent freedom of information request responses.

McCormack began his own campaigning spurred on by the work of Sir Alan Bates and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA). After his own research, he made serious accusations against the Post Office in 2015 and 2016.

But back then, the Post Office was not under the same public scrutiny as it is today, and despite awareness of what had gone on in government and beyond, it defended the indefensible. In fact, in 2015, it doubled down on its defence when it sacked forensic investigators Second Sight and was under pressure from the (JFSA).

It was six years earlier that the JFSA was established, following a Computer Weekly investigation revealing the plight of subpostmasters using Horizon. Bates had been campaigning for years by then.

If, in 2015, the Post Office and its then CEO Paula Vennells had listened and acted on McCormack’s warnings, she might have been spared her shameful appearance at the Post Office Horizon scandal statutory inquiry. Instead, the Post Office saw him as a troublemaker, and labelled him a “bluffer”.

Ultimatum

In October 2015, McCormack wrote directly to Vennells with an ultimatum, which is now public knowledge after its appearance at the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry. But what is less known about is the subject of the email, and how he and a team of subpostmasters found proof that a software bug in Horizon was causing unexplained shortfalls in branch accounts.

The subject of the email – the discovery of a bug at a Post Office branch in Dalmellington, Scotland – gave McCormack the ammunition to issue his ultimatum to Vennells.

In his email to Vennells, who was in denial over Horizon errors, McCormack offered to demonstrate the Dalmellington error to her. He told her of his plans to take the story to the press. “It is a last chance for you to accept what I have been telling you these last few years is true,” he wrote. “I now have clear and unquestionable evidence of an intermittent bug in Horizon that can and does cause thousands of pounds of losses to subpostmasters.

“Tonight, there is a branch in your network sitting on a loss of five figures,” he told Vennells. “The money does not exist. It is a result of several one-sided transactions being entered erroneously by the system, not the operator.”

He gave Vennells three options: “Accept that many of the claimants in the JFSA are honest and decent citizens whose lives were destroyed by your organisation, go to the press and see what happens, or await the inevitable judicial review where you will personally be exposed and perhaps leave yourself open to criminal charges.”

    A year later, McCormack was warning Surrey Police that a Post Office lawyer had committed a “potential crime” by failing to disclose relevant evidence to the defence team of a subpostmistress being prosecuted for theft.

    The lawyer in question was Jarnail Singh, the Post Office’s former head of criminal law, who appeared at the public inquiry in December 2023.

    After reading the 2010 trial transcript years later, McCormack wrote to Surrey Police to report his suspicion that the Post Office’s prosecutor withheld evidence that would have undermined Misra’s prosecution.

    Possible criminal offence

    In his email, McCormack wrote: “I wish to bring to your attention what I consider to be a serious failure and possible criminal offence by a prosecution team during a criminal trial that took place at Guildford Crown Court in October 2010.

    “It would appear that the prosecution failed to disclose material evidence to the defence, which is exacerbated by the fact that as prosecution, Post Office were responsible for the evidence in question. Post Office, as prosecutors, act under your supervision as far as I am aware, and are bound by your Code for Crown Prosecutors.”

    McCormack drew the police force’s attention to the investigation report into the Horizon system produced by independent forensic accountants Second Sight in 2015, which revealed that in 2010, the Post Office knew, through an internal document, about software bugs that could cause unexplained accounting shortfalls.

    Surrey Police wrote back to McCormack informing him that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was investigating, and that if it were to continue, it would only be duplicating the CCRC’s efforts. “It has been confirmed that if the CCRC review finds any evidence of non-disclosure, they will pass their findings on to the police to move forward. If this happens, we would of course reopen our investigation,” said the police reply.

    Misra had her wrongful conviction for theft overturned in the Court of Appeal five years later, in April 2021.

    Today, as well as a statutory public inquiry, there is also a national police investigation into Post Office and Fujitsu executives, set up by the Metropolitan Police, which 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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