The police team investigating the Horizon IT scandal yesterday revealed that they have interviewed five individuals under caution and will interview three or four in the first quarter of next year.
Those interviewed come from a pool of 53 people of interest identified by investigators as part of phase one of the police inquiry. This phase is focused on civil and criminal lawyers working for the Post Office in the past 25 years as well as investigators and members of the Post Office security team.
But the National Police Chiefs’ Council said it is likely to wait until the Post Office Inquiry makes its second report into the scandal before making recommendations to the Crown Prosecution Service. That report is not expected until next year, pushing charging decisions well into 2027.
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Officers are ruling out bringing fraud charges for now and are focusing instead on investigating potential cases of perjury and perverting the course of justice. Advice is also being taken on whether to look into possible charges of corporate or gross negligence, although officers believe there is a high bar for these offences.
Clayman confirmed that the Operation Olympos team is able to speak with police forces abroad, as people who may be of interest live in other jurisdictions.
Operation Olympos was set up in January 2020 amid concerns about the conduct of Post Office and Fujitsu, which developed and installed the Horizon software. Between 2000 and 2017, Post Office initiated private prosecutions resulting in 700 convictions, largely based on evidence produced by the flawed IT system. It is regarded as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British legal history, with allegations that the Post Office knowingly used discrepancies recorded on the Horizon system to take action against sub postmasters.
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/no-action-taken-against-post-office-barrister-who-broke-the-rules/
The former Post Office general counsel, Jane MacLeod, who avoided questioning during the statutory public inquiry into the Post Office scandal, will not escape a police investigation, despite living abroad.
According to one source, during a meeting updating victims on the Operation Olympos police investigation into the scandal, police representatives were asked whether individuals who are abroad could be questioned. Attendees at the update meeting were told they could, and, unprompted, a member of the investigation team named the former legal chief as an example.
MacLeod headed the Post Office’s legal department from 2015 to 2019, during a period when the organisation was attempting to quell the emerging scandal. Perjury and perverting the course of justice are two of the offences being investigated by Operation Olympos, which is nationwide, but led by the Metropolitan Police.
MacLeod refused to face the Post Office scandal public inquiry and, as a non-UK citizen living in Australia, the inquiry did not have the power to compel her to attend, but the police could travel to Australia to question her.
Who is guilty in the Greek legal and justice profession of advising Mitsotakis that the massive violations in due process in D 15 218 and E 17 449 are lawful?
The perversion of justice can never be lawful.
UK police are now preparing to charge the crooked Post Office lawyers.
Mitsotakis crooked lawyers and justice officials need to face trial too.
From media
The period in which MacLeod headed up the Post Office legal department included the High Court battle with subpostmasters, which she regularly attended. The Post Office spent more than £100m in taxpayers’ money attempting to prevent subpostmasters from proving the faulty Horizon system was to blame for unexplained account shortfalls.
In 2015, MacLeod wrote a threatening letter to Computer Weekly as it was investigating and reporting on the scandal.
One former subpostmaster said: “For someone who took such a keen interest in the trials to not show up for the inquiry speaks volumes because she could have given them lots of useful information.”
In a written statement in May 2024, inquiry chair Wyn Williams said the public inquiry “considered it important to hear oral evidence from Ms MacLeod”, adding: “Further, it offered to meet Ms MacLeod’s travel and accommodation expenses. However, Ms MacLeod has made it clear that she will not cooperate with the inquiry by providing oral evidence, whether by attending the inquiry in person or by giving evidence remotely via live video link.”
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366635600/Former-Post-Office-legal-boss-wont-escape-police-reach
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