Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said an “exhaustive investigation” will have to take place to determine whether crimes have been committed, involving detectives trawling through tens of millions of documents, and the investigation will follow the public inquiry into the issue that is due to publish its findings late next year.
But that timescale provoked fresh anger from sub-postmasters who were falsely accused and in some cases criminally convicted, of stealing after the defective Horizon accounting system, developed by Fujitsu’s ICL business, made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
The Post Office also forced at least 4,000 branch managers to pay back cash based on the flawed data.
Gary Brown, 68, spent 14 years running a post office in Rawcliffe, near Goole, East Yorks, with his wife Maureen, 66, but was left suicidal after being “forced” to admit stealing £32,000 to avoid jail.
He said: “It doesn’t surprise me at all, not in the slightest. They’ve just been kicking us down the road. There’s no urgency or anything. It’s just been all against us.
“They do have to bring cases against them, I just hope I’m alive to see it. It’s just how it’s been all along.
Former sub-postmistress Louise Dar, 41, from Glasgow, said it was “ridiculous” that it might take two years for the criminal investigation to conclude.
Her life was left in tatters after her family were forced to close their business when the Horizon accounting system flagged shortfalls at her branch totalling £44,000.
She said: “They were so quick to imprison people and take out aspects of our life from us. I think it’s ridiculous to take as long as two years, and it probably will take a lot longer than that because they’ll just say that’s their kind of ‘guideline’.
“I would say it needs to be prioritized because you wouldn’t take that length of time to prosecute anyone else in the public.
Sami Sabet, 68, believes the scandal has cost him £2.8 million and his lawyers are currently in the process of putting in a bid for compensation from the Post Office.
He added: “It’s already been 20 years since all this started. How old are most people now?
“I just don’t want anything to delay this anymore. At the same time, I want proper and full compensation.”
Their anger came after Sir Mark told LBC: “We’re now working with police forces across the country to pull together what will have to be a national investigation, which we’ll pull together because there’s hundreds of postmasters and mistresses from across the country.
“Fujitsu is based in one part of the country and the Post Office is in another part of the country, it’s a massive piece of work to do.
“Clearly, we have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, really 99.99%, that individuals knowingly corrupted something, so that’s going way beyond incompetence, you have to prove deliberate malice, and that has to be done very thoroughly with an exhaustive investigation. So it won’t be quick.
“But the police service across the country is alive to this and we will do everything we can to bring people to justice if criminal offences can be proven.”
