Getty ImagesFormer Post Office boss Paula Vanilles told the final day of the Horizon IT scandal inquiry that her senior team had failed to inform her of key information but said she had “no desire to point the finger at others”.
In a closing statement, Ms Vanels’ lawyer named a number of former colleagues – including Angela van den Boegaard – who he claimed did not tell him about relevant facts connected to the scandal.
Subpostmasters at the inquiry greeted Ms Vennells’ words with sighs and, when the former Anglican priest said she did not want to blame others, with laughter.
More than 900 sub-postmasters were sued for shortfalls in their accounts due to errors in the Horizon IT system.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday the government said it would pay compensation to all postmasters who suffered losses due to glitches in Post Office IT systems before Horizon, known as Capture.
The government said it had asked the Post Office to “immediately review its files” so that criminal review bodies “can ensure that no one is wrongly convicted of Horizon-style injustices”. Not given”.
The Capture accounting system was used between 1992 and 1999, when it was replaced by Horizon.
To an inquiry by Horizon, Ms Vanilles’ lawyer, Samantha Lake KC, claimed that there was “nothing to suggest that she acted in bad faith” throughout the hearing.
Ms Lake said Ms Venelles “cannot, and does not, try to hide the fact that as chief executive she was unable to uncover the truth about the extent of bugs, errors and defects in the software”. .
But “he simply didn’t get the information he should have been given by his senior team, whom he trusted and to whom he delegated responsible roles”.
“Ms. Venales does not know why important information was not communicated to her,” he added.
Ms Vanilles was Chief Executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019. She was previously the network director at the organization for five years.
His statement is the last to be heard in the long-running inquiry into the Horizon scandal, which opened in September 2020.
It heard from 298 witnesses, received statements from 780 witnesses and processed more than 2.2 million pages of disclosures.
‘people died’
Edward Henry KC, who works for all postmasters, told the inquiry earlier this week: “People are ruined, people are bankrupted, people are imprisoned, cruel miscarriages of justice. It happened, people died.
“Whether the board and the executive were aware of these improprieties from the outset is an irrelevant point.
Post Office bosses “refused” to admit that Horizon’s shortfall errors had created “a terrible risk”, adding that it was “a recipe for certain disaster”.
A lawyer for the Post Office said the inquiry was “a humbling experience”.
Nicola Greaney QC said the scandal involved “failures of infrastructure and governance” but that today’s Post Office was “a different organization from the failures of the past”.
He admitted that the Post Office “has a long way to go to restore its relationship with postmasters and the public”.
On Monday, lawyers for several victims of the scandal said in closing statements that their clients were still awaiting compensation.
Months after the Post Office launched Horizon in 1999, legal proceedings against sub-postmasters began, and continued until 2015, resulting in one of the most massive miscarriages of justice in British justice.
Maureen McKelvey, who ran the post office in Clanabogen in Omagh between 1990 and 2001, said she was still waiting for funding.
“I have been made to feel like a beggar waiting for compensation,” he said.