Post Office Horizon Scandal: Inquiry Reveals Cover-Up and Continued Unraveling

Former investigator testifies on fear of challenging faulty system, while documents reveal dismissal of forensic accountants who found bugs in the Horizon IT system.

The ongoing Post Office Horizon IT scandal in the UK, which led to the wrongful prosecution of more than 900 sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015 due to glitches in the Horizon accounting software, continues to unravel with new revelations and developments.
Documents reveal that the Post Office secretly dismissed forensic accountants who had found bugs in the Horizon IT system, with the full knowledge of the Government.
Despite knowing about the software issues as early as 2013, the Post Office allegedly sought to keep this information quiet and continued to defend the Horizon system until 2019.
An ongoing public inquiry into the scandal has heard from former Post Office investigator Suzanne Winter, who said she feared questioning the reliability of the faulty accounting system used as evidence to prosecute hundreds of branch owner-operators because she believed that, 'if you started to challenge too much, it didn’t go well'.
So far, 93 sub-postmasters have had their convictions overturned and around £138 million has been paid out to approximately 2,700 sub-postmasters across three compensation schemes. However, hundreds more are yet to receive a payout or have their convictions overturned.