It is “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice” in British history, according to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Between 1999 and 2015, nearly a thousand branch managers of the Post Office, a public company, were prosecuted, accused of theft, on the basis of erroneous information from accounting software called Horizon, from Fujitsu. Postal workers have had to repay falsely created shortfalls, leading to ruin for many. Some were imprisoned. Four of them committed suicide.
The scandal, which has returned to the forefront across the Channel since January and the broadcast of a fiction series on the subject by ITV, continues to create a stir. While the former head of the Post Office, under pressure from public opinion, returned a decoration given to her by Queen Elizabeth II in 2018, the current head, Henry Staunton, has just been dismissed from his position , British Trade Minister Kemi Badenoch announced on Sunday.
“It didn’t work”
“I decided we needed a new chairman” for the Post Office because “it just wasn’t working,” the minister told the BBC. “I have decided that, because of all the difficulties encountered by the Post Office, not just Horizon (the name given to the scandal, Editor’s note) but the entire economic model […] we needed someone capable of managing these issues effectively,” continued the Conservative minister.
Minister Kemi Badenoch promised on Sunday that compensation for victims would be done “as quickly as possible” but refused to set a deadline. So far, almost £150 million (€174 million) has been paid to around 2,500 victims in recent years.