Post Office Inquiry: former investigator ‘feared challenging Horizon experts would not go well’
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- Опубліковано 25 січ 2024
- A former Post Office investigator has said she could not question Horizon system experts because she believed that “if you started to challenge too much, it didn’t go well”.
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This is basically a confession. The investigations weren't really investigations because not every part was investigated! The willingness, this week, of these "investigators" to shift blame or lose their memories is damning and just adds to an already appalling story.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
An investigation that exposed the management was as welcome as a fart in a lift and the evidence already given by one of the investigators is there were frequent redundancy programmes to keep everyone in the teams on their toes. The management created this culture not unqualified staff
Yes, she was certainly coming across as having slippery shoulders and a poor memory. If everything any of them has said is taken at face value, they did everything as best they could and did nothing wrong, which would mean this whole thing amounts to just "whoops, what could we have done, let's move on".
All these senior post office managers and investigators have alzheimer's
disease! or Perhaps it's the aftermath of mad cow disease in the 80s!
Another liar. I know nothing.
This woman is evil, she put innocent people in jail and most lost everything because of her lies.
Slightly disagree but the lawyer that took the case to court shouldn’t get away with anything !!!! judges should have challenged evidence too it’s a massive conspiracy
I find it odd, but not in any way surprising, that these people cannot remember, or recall, anything that makes them look incompetent or in any way vindictive, but just following the guidance demanded by the bosses of the PO. But they do seem to remember things that may well exonerate them in some way.
Yes, where were the magistrates, judges, and above all the solicitors!?
Another failure of British justice at the time
Another backpedalling now.
@@eugenesvoboda9177 Solicitors, in my experience suit the action word of 'soliciting'. I see them as prostitutes after my experience of being defrauded. Judges in lloyds banking fraud cases were corrupt. This is likely to be the same. People have lost their sense of moral integrity. They do as their corrupt masters tell them to do.
All these senior post office managers and investigators have alzheimer's
disease! or Perhaps it's the aftermath of mad cow disease in the 80s!
A financial system that is kept secret and cannot be scrutinised with a verifiable auditable track (basic accountancy ) is no more than an opinion and at worse a tool for false accounts itself. each and every 'expert witness' from the PO and Fujitsu should be individually prosecuted for false accounting. The very things they claimed are the very thing they are guilty of time and time again.
there was only one expert witness across 1000s of cases from fujitsu
'i was only following orders' didn't work in Nuremberg and it won't work here
And look what happened to them courtesy of Albert Pierrepoint!
she should serve time
It most certainly will work. I’d be surprised if any of the post office people were prosecuted.
@@hugolindum7728 I suspect this time there will be prosecutions. Perjury is obvious. Like Caesar they'll throw gladiators into the pit to appease the crowd.
A classic display of legal dissection. It is wonderful. Watch. And she couldn’t apologise to her innocent victims.
Her not taking responsibility for her vile actions which ruined lives while the tax payer foots the bill. She's putting the blame on the PO and Fujitsu as if she's sn innocent victim of the scandal herself. Despicable. PO must have been selecting for people with personality disorders in their recruitment of these investigators. No one should excuse them for saying they didn't want to lose their job and had mortgage to pay. They should have fdone the right thing and got another job.
There seems to be quite significant amnesia in most of these investigators. Disgraceful!!
All these senior post office managers and investigators have alzheimer's
disease! or Perhaps it's the aftermath of mad cow disease in the 80s!
She's an investigator but she can't investigate? Is she lying, incompetent or both?
Richardsawyer, Both.!!!
If you challenged it didn't go well.
If you challenged you lost your job.
She was more interested in keeping her well paid job, justice was never a requirement, she should be charged.
They should have resigned and changed their jobs but were too greedy or vindictive or both.
You may be unaware, but what you say here, goes, in my experience, for most people working in such organisations. I say what i do after going through all regulatory, policing government organisations after being defrauded. Most people do as they are told. They have forgone all sense of right and wrong and are 'programmed' to protect corruption. That is my experience.
@@gwyneth7812 Some are prepared to stand up for what is right. They may view those who don't as spineless. I speak from experience too.
@@TheGizby Thank you for your comment, it's good to get your reply, i wish there were more of you, because most, as you say are 'spineless' colluders.
These people simply ruined other people’s lives. She knew the cases brought were fundamentally flawed on an evidential basis. Where is basic moral fibre and humanity here?
What kind of people believe that they can keep a software error secret, press ahead with 700 prosecutions, and think the whole sordid affair won't eventually come to light?
Not the sharpest tools in the shed.
Her family must be so proud
Wow, so unproffessional. These investigators are terrible people.
That's a polite way of putting it
Don’t forget the fantastic bonuses they received for prosecuting a innocent person
@@carolbamforth7475 It's called 'Blood Money' and is nothing new
They were/are.
The PO must have recruited and retained on the basis of looking for staff who were dim, and totally lacking any morality.
All those I've seen, so far, have been dreadful people.
@@carolbamforth7475 Innocent Person Singular!! Innocent persons and many of them, sadly. Makes the Mafia look like a bunch of amateurs
Guilty until you prove your innocence. Investigators with selective memories and selective prosecution summaries. Investigators now playing the victim card and blaming it on the big boys who led them astray. Pathetic.
So basically she let innocent people be prosecuted and jailed , it was her duty to expose the truth she herself should now face prosecution .
Nah, none of them will be affected.
It is staggering that postmasters were unable to verify transactions through an audit trail - a massive system-design failure, and that investigators did not validate transactions in Horizon but simply accepted the balances shown by it.
The Police didn't need a statement to say that the computer was reliable, the police needed a statement to ascertain whether the computer system was reliable or not. Having watched much of the trial and this weeks questioning of Investigating officers I have noted a number of similarities. Most, if not all were recruited from the shop floor, postal staff, counter staff etc. None had any qualifications in law or experience in investigating or law enforcement in previous employment. They all seemed to set about their investigations with the presumption of guilt regarding the people who stood accused. They gathered evidence looking for 'enough' evidence to convict, rather than Investigating matters and testing evidence thoroughly enough to form a balanced opinion based on all relevant facts. While their approach to investigations was of a poor standard, the responsibility for their actions lies with their employer and the organisations who were charged with both monitoring their methods and checking their evidence. These people were handed a tremendous amount of power and responsibility and left to their own devices for much of their service.
Absolutely Correct, in House incompetence.
Intentional incompetence. 👍
She can't recall how she got to the inquiry.
The comment about "if you challenged, it didn't go well" reverberates through all our national institutions
We need to weed out the bullies and psychopaths in the top jobs.
You are SO right - spot on and my experience.
I put in a complaint about a former chief Cons..able - he was/is protected by everyone. I was even told that the letters that he signed and wrote to me 'wouldn't be from him' - 'He wouldn't have written them'. Even though they were specific letters about my case, they called them 'generic' so it was a way for him to get out of answering my questions. So i said to the review officer in IOPC, 'are you saying then then whatever a CC writes we cannot trust and that he is a liar'? She said 'yes'. I said 'wow, thats quite a statement for you to make'. Is she a robot or what?
By the way, someone else i know made an FOI about this man and found that he had paid off 22 people to the sum of £351,000 of public money. This man is now in a more senior post.
All the post office directors involved suffer from selective amnesia.
I read somewhere that a campaigner wrote to the Inquiry suggesting one investigator who was questioned in November had early onset dementia.
She was told by Fujitsu that there was nothing wrong with the system and believed them. When was this? Surely she knew something about other sub-postmasters claiming there were glitches in the system. She surely should have realised that this was at least worthy of consideration.
The Post Office were experts at covering up the truth.
Deny, deny, deny.
Play an ACE.
@@X94Caz They were using Official Secrets to gag.
She would rather believe that previously innocent post masters were thieves and send them to prison. Quite happy to take a salary and bonuses. The more comes out the more horrific this corrupt cover up gets.
@@damianleah6744 What was driving this evil? Greed's not enough.
It was to protect the PO's "brand image" and supposed reputation. Vennels did the same by closing down the Second Sight investigation.@@JelMain
I watch as many as I can as they are happening and have become convinced that almost every person appearing has been ordered to deny everything and remember nothing….the question is who is doing the ordering ?
Yes me too , you just have to hope it gets harder to deny the further up the rotten tree it gets ...
Collecctive agreement - all those who knew they were perverting the course of justice had a little chat and decided if they all 'forgot' there's nothing they could be conviected for...
The root of all this denial stems from the Lawyers , the whole extremely expensive inquiry appears to have rubber teeth , I am totally convinced that not one PO senior manager will face prosecution , aided by the government and the civil service this thing will be kicked into the long grass and will be strutting along in ten years time , by which time many people will have passed on all the culpable managers will have retired or scuttled abroad still drawing their pensions while a few disposable junior people have been charged but only cautioned, such is British justice in today's world.
YES, just like Grenfell.@@karlmylnere5712
Not one of these PO employees would know the truth if it hit them in the face. Cannot help feeling there is some ££££ incentive to be as obtuse as all of them have been.
As a retired IT architect, I find this a strange conversation. I would ask the experts to show me the architecture of the system and explain how the system works. Then, I would identify potential failures and ask how the system handles those failures - e.g. a power failure, network failure, disk failure, synchronisation failure, system frozen in mid-transaction… I would also ask for a walkthrough of what to do, if the system doesn’t balance and ask what could cause this. It seems that this investigator lacked the basic IT skills to ask those questions. In her defence, it also appears that the Post Office prevented her from talking to the experts and made her submit written questions. That would make it nearly impossible to get to the bottom of the problems.
Unfortunately they don't seem to have the intelligence, logical thinking or common sense to follow this system of procedure. Easy just to assume guilt and take it from there. Enough to make you weep.
In my opinion the fault here isn't with lack of IT skills, but a lack of understanding responsibility, which is independent of specific technical expertise.
You either have sufficient information to proceed or you do not. If you do continue, you accept in part accountability for the outcome. If this is done under duress, you have accountability as far as documenting this in some way.
To tell the truth have to think about that
Another spineless waste of oxygen
If these so called 'investigators' had any humanity they would at the very least apologise publically and to each spm individually. Let them feel shame and embarrassment like their victims did.
They were basically prosecuters without any oversight rather than investigators.
prosecutors with enablers and incentives
Another example of spineless,blind obedience,and wilful cruelty.keep your head down,conform and take the money;how do these people sleep at night?
Any decent and honest person would refuse to investigate people whose lives could be ruined if they could not verify every aspect of the situation.
These people were following ORDERS "IT WAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME"
GOVERNOR. she said. He said.
😂😂🎉🎉😂 3:26
If had even a slither of humanity, and morals.
Clearly they did not.
@diane4488 in life paying your mortgage and putting food on the table then I am afraid showing compassion to others never gets a look in when they are paying your wages.
@@diane4488 Sadly i have come across this attitude for 16 years after being defrauded. The system breeds and trains people like this.
These people are purely brilliant. The legal questions are to the point and direct.
She does a Polly from Faulty Towers when trying to cover up. As she's answering she starts off slowly as shes making it up, then mid sentence she's planned her response and speeds up looking all pleased that she thinks shes saved herself. Very obvious because the first thing she says is can't remember.
Sorry, prevaricating to hide something methinks!
Guilty until proven innocent and post office is the only people that can prove your are innocent and refuse to help you!!nasty nasty nasty it’s sad to see this side of humanity to many self centred tawts with to much power!!! this goes all the way to the government it just evil.
This woman is unbelievable
you get the feeling she still thinks these people were quilty..........
Gutless. No professional integrity
At one point in this case/ evidence, as well as others, a form was exhibited that showed how SBMs were able to/ or the help desk were able to correct positive AND negative balances! This shows that under Horizon, both positive & negative balances COULD be corrected and were indeed it was anticipated would occur. I’ve been saying from the beginning of watching this fiasco roll out that I thought the way to challenge the PO assertion that a SPM was defrauding the PO was to totally reconstruct the various accounting transactions over a sample period. In this case a firm of forensic accountants did try to do that. But they couldn’t do it in totality because not all the records were STILL available ( I wonder why?). This investigator clearly was inadequately trained in my opinion as she never really looked at the whole system , but relied on being told the computer “ was never wrong” so under recording had to be down to the SPM. TALK ABOUT BLINKERED! The line management structure and reporting structure were also at fault.
I can’t believe this investigator could not remember what the Judge said at the end of the case where the SPM was acquitted. Even if she went to court on 10s of cases, an acquittal such as that would be etched into her memory. Going to court is in my experience very exhausting not to say unforgettable especially if the outcome is not what you expect!
So the Post Office Northern Ireland were provided with an independent forensic accounting report in December 2004 for a defendant's case, which showed inexplicable serious Horizon computer errors, and this must surely have been distributed within Post Office London HQ - but did not initiate a wide thorough investigation, so a 1,000 prosecutions continued for 10 years.
"inexplicable serious Horizon computer errors" 20 years later why were they inexplicable? What precisely were the errors? Has nobody with programming skills investigated this?
It was only an accounting report in 2004 not a highly technical computer diagnosis.
Not sure but I think about 40 different errors have been since identified by computer tech experts. @@wedwardes
As an investigator myself, I find it totally unbelievable the way these so called investigations were carried out. Appalling.
Oh yeah, it’s all Fujitsu’s fault. We had nothing to do with it?….
The police needed a statement that there was nothing wrong with the system! To my mind this statement alone says no one was really investigating or interested in finding out what was going on but just gathering information to prosecute. Fujitsu “ There’s nothing wrong with our system” ok then. Sub post officers “there’s something wrong with the system “ we don’t believe you, there isn’t because fujitsu says there isn’t. They should be ashamed to call themselves investigators. If after there own investigation criminal wrongdoing is suspected they should report it to the police to investigate before criminal charges are brought. Let’s be honest who in there right mind is going to believe/ trust the post office or there investigators after this travesty. Let’s hope after a police investigation into this people from post office & Fujitsu are held accountable & the sub post officers get proper justice.
She couldn't name any names as far as someone who would have made it very difficult for anyone who challenged Horizon Investigators. She didn't feel she could challenge anything. Sounds like she was just generally incompetent.
This is a classic psychology of a self-righteous 'small person' given a dangerous amount of power. Lower and mid-level corporate individuals can be life-wrecking for those under them. She still does not get it. I watched her entire testimony and it was very clear that she still thinks the people that she harmed are guilty! She still does!!!
She clearly wasn't a proper investigator. Someone appointed to that job should never be 'put off' challenging ANYTHING. She seems to have missed the entire point of her job. Another one who's scurrying about trying to shift blame. I would jail her.
Yes, they never investigated anything, except how can we conduct this person and take huge sums of money from them?
The subtext of the Official Secrets Act (David Davis MP's YT profile a couple of days back) raises it's head.
No morality
Jail her
"If there was anything wrong with the computer......" - yeah, she seems well informed. Holy sh**.
I wonder how many sleepless nights it took these investigators before they just accepted the fact their job was to get the result the PO wanted and had no problem getting a good nights sleep unlike the innocent victims 😡
It was obvious that the internal environment at the PO was toxic, and that staff should not question anything, especially if Horizon was involved.
Incompetent is way short when mentioning these investigations, it’s more like criminal negligence or straight fraud. They had no problem charging 900 odd people so we shouldn’t have an issue charging a few hundred investigators, senior managers and officials at the P.O. and the politicians that helped the cover up. While they may not get prison time a conviction will help ruin their professional lives and greatly diminish their personal lives too, it’s less than they deserve IMO.
If your JOB is to be an investigator and you're NOT COMPETENT to understand the information provided, you are NOT QUALFIED FOR THE JOB and should have said so and resigned.
Jail time madam??
The defence lawyers who lost the case should have to pay back some of the money because they obviously did a terrible job defending the postmasters who were falsely imprisoned.
This is the WINTER of our dissent
The problem with these kind of investigators within public and semi-public organisations is that they have very little knowledge of the law - ( Evidence, Pleading and Practice). Their training (such as it is) is very narrowly focused on - 'what I must do to secure a conviction'. The incentive of securing a conviction trumps any concerns that may arise in relation to the safety of that conviction. This is why they will press the accused so hard to 'cop a guilty plea' - because the cases that they prepare are often unable to withstand any scrutiny if challenged in court by defence solicitors (good ones I mean). Lack of access to legal aid often results in this scrutiny going by default in cases of this kind.
A memory of convenience! She should go to jail.
Latest news just now!! Post office investigations are being closed because no one can remember anything.
The Post Office needs renaming "Gestapo"
Typical bully behaviour by these investigators. Pick on the weaker people ( the subpostmasters) but not willing to challenge the bigger parties involved - the PO and Fujitsu. Dreadful. I thought whe was given a very easy time with Emma Price, the barrister. Thank heavens the victims legal teams took her to task.
Should have asked her what she had for breakfast, I can’t remember.😡
Now they know how those people felt in the dock.
They have to pay the full amount of money that will be required to post masters
"I DO NOT RECALL" How convenient. And sounds like the advised words to use from the P.O. legal team. Dishonest and deplorable.
We need to see Post Office executives and their lying lawyers and investigators (seen here) serving jail time for this and heavy compensation for their victims and the families of lost victims.
didn't understand and didnt ask for clarification..........degradations' of duty and responsibilities
I wonder why she just doesn't stand up, raise her right arm, and say "Mein Fuhrer. I vas only following ze orders"
none of these people show any remorse or feelings and always blame someone else
The people at the top are the guilty ones not the lower ranks like this woman. There are huge class differences amongst the witnesses
She should be in jail. For complete incompetence.
Another incompetent and lying culprit of this scandal showing not a shred of remorse. As previously alluded to yet another with the memory of a gnat except for issues where she thinks she is exonerating herself.
A typical response in not being able to remember as you're concentrating to prosecute someone, but I imagine she will have time to reflect when her day in court results in a custodial sentence for her lack of querying the evidence at the time..
Another liar look after me me me me
Amazing now their under investigation they got selective memory .
Notice how the investigators they hired were lowbrow northerners and scottish mostly? Think about that.
This is just industrialised criminality. Period.
There has been nothing released on the precise nature of the Horizon errors. If the errors were random then 600+ postmasters would have received windfall profits. Have these been investigated and clawed back? Unlikely as that would have amounted to an admission of the errors leading to the losses.
These people aren't investigators, they are interrogators.
Think this news story has more or less had its day at this point.
Post Office: Nowt to do with us, too technical, ask Fujitsu.
Fujitsu: Nowt to do with us, ask the Post Office.
Another PO investigator with amnesia, apparently. Selective memory, more like.
Did they deliberately choose the cerebrally challenged as investigators ?
Deflect, divert and delegate to someone else, and when it goes tits up, you are innocent, even though you are in charge, and accountable - no longer how long this takes.
I trust these investigators who do not investigate properly, nor fully, the numerous POL managers, who appeared to just sit around drinking tea with biscuits for their salaries and bonuses, are prosecuted, and jailed. Their are blue collar workers who have done far less for custodial sentences. These people are just attempting to save their pensions and lump sums with falsehoods. A suspended sentence, or a fine, is not good enough. Wouldn't it be lovely if they had to sew up mailbags in chokey today?
As for the culpable at Fujitsu, words fail me!
She sounds like a victim 😅😅😅😮😮😮
I found some stuff hard to follow but they were guilty and deserved to go to jail
computer says no.....lol
Common theme #1: "It was a number of years ago (insert accent)".
Theme #2: investigators investigating about software glitches they had no expertise with.
Theme #3: looks like these investigators got their qualifications from the same hole in the wall. Wherever that may well be 😂
The Great Panjandrum appears to have been the The Power behind these injustices as each of the participants tell us they were only carrying out the instructions of some malevolent and unsweving superior
wow, it was orchestrated by the management at po and law firm
Sorry but this person is clearly just winging it - her language and demeanour speaks volumes. And I love how she keeps on saying "computer" rather than the software, Horizon. Totally clueless.
One question not asked of all these people did they have a mortgage and pension to protect more than the innocence of the sub postmasters shalom thank me later
Don´t say Horizon can get it wrong FFS
👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿