Post Office Investigator 'Acted Like A Gangster'

An investigator accused of acting like a "mafia gangster" when securing false convictions against post office operators has admitted lesser charges were offered in exchange for silence over the failings of the Horizon IT system.

- Daniel Boffey

The accused were told they could avoid a jail sentence if they kept quiet about the accounting system's faults, as part of an aggressive Post Office court strategy.

Giving evidence yesterday at a public inquiry in central London into one of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice, Stephen Bradshaw, who remains employed by the Post Office where he has worked since 1978, denied calling one female suspect a "bitch" while working as a fraud investigator but admitted to accusing another of telling a "pack of lies" during what he conceded were "not nice" interviews.

He conceded that he had known of claims that the Horizon accounting system was at fault for discrepancies in branches' accounts "from the beginning" but that he had not received orders from the top to stop the prosecutions.

Edward Henry KC, who represents some of those falsely accused, said: "Mr Bradshaw, contrary to what you say, you and your department, the security department, were drenched in information that Horizon wasn't working from the very beginning." "The information came through, yes," Bradshaw replied.

He conceded that Post Office lawyers offering more lenient charges to those who stated in court that there was "nothing wrong with Horizon" was "probably" wrong.