According to the most recent witness, the Metropolitan Police have taken over the investigation into allegations that a Post Office employee advised staff to destroy or conceal evidence that might be of interest to the Post Office scandal people inquiry.
Prior to this, the Met Police and the Post Office had no authority to comment on whether the investigation had become a police issue.
According to a witness statement from the Post Office’s latest company secretary Rachel Scarrabelotti, who was the Post Office’s first employee, “allegations that a top Post Office employee had instructed their team to destroy or conceal material of potential interest to the inquiry, and that the same individual had engaged in inappropriate behavior,” according to Computer Weekly’s first report earlier this month.
The Metropolitan Police responded to a request from Computer Weekly at the time, saying:” We ca n’t comment on specific individuals, but the Met is a Core Participant in the public inquiry and is monitoring and evaluating material as it is received, along with other additional lines of investigation.
However, the most recent public inquiry hearing evidence confirmed that the Met Police are then looking into a case involving a person. During his evidence session, John Bartlett, director of assurance and complex investigations at the Post Office, confirmed that the Metropolitan Police was then investigating:” We told the inquiry about it, we told the Met Police about it and it is now a Met Police investigation”.
When asked, Bartlett confirmed that the person under investigation, who is already suspended, is not involved in giving evidence in the current phase – Phase 7 – of the public inquiry.
The startling revelation echoes the evidence from 2021’s wrongful conviction appeals. In light of claims that errors in the system led to unexpected accounting shortfalls, it was revealed during the Court of Appeal trials that a top Post Office executive gave employees instructions to shred documents .
Lawyers for former , subpostmasters who were challenging unlawful prosecutions at the Court of Appeal heard advice given to the Post Office in 2013 by Simon Clarke, a barrister advising the Post Office at the time.
The minutes of a past conference call had been typed and emailed to a number of people, according to a note to the Post Office that was written in 2013. An instruction was finally given that those emails and minutes should be, and have been, destroyed: the word’ crushed’ was conveyed to me”.
Former police officer and listed expert for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, judicial psychologist Ian Ross, said it is necessary to explain the importance of destroying any kind of evidence.
Criticising police inaction in relation to the scandal, he said:” In some instances in the Post Office scandal, the police should have taken action and charged certain individuals with certain offences already” . ,  ,
The Post Office scandal, which was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealed the accounts of seven subpostmasters and the issues they encountered as a result of Horizon accounting software, which caused the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history ( see below list of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009 ).
• Even read:  , What you need to know about the Horizon scandal , •
• Even watch:  , ITV’s documentary – , Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The true story , •
• Even read:  , Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means big taxpayers ‘ bill , •
