Paula Vennells described the cases of wrongly convicted subpostmasters as “deeply disturbing” in a 2013 email that was labeled the “smoking gun” of the scandal.
In the email, the former CEO confirms that she has received and read important evidence about possible wrongful convictions, including that of a sub-postmaster who went to prison.
“I just read through the attachments. Besides finding them very disturbing (I defy anyone not to), I am even better informed now,” she wrote, adding: “I take this very seriously.”
The response was sent more than five hours after she received documents submitted by eight sub-postmasters, two of whom had been in prison, and concerns a plan to mediate their complaints.
One of the files involved Noel Thomasnow 77, who was jailed for false accounting in 2006 after being held responsible for £48,000 missing from his post office accounts on Anglesey.
In the document sent to Vennells, he wrote: “I was convicted of false accounting and sent to prison… I cannot explain how or why the deficits occurred. I could not operate the computer system properly. I believe that the Horizon computer system should be forensically investigated.”
He took the form saying his life was now “a total disaster”, writing: “My home and business premises. My wife lost her shop, we lost all our savings… my losses would be closer to £500,000. I am now bankrupt.”
Two years later, in 2015, Vennells told MPs that no evidence of miscarriages of justice had been found, and that if there had been, “it would have been very important to me and the Post Office that we expose them would bring”.
Under her leadership, the post office continued to deny any errors in Horizon until 2019.
Paula Vennells will speak publicly about the scandal for the first time in a decade when she gives evidence at the public inquiry on Wednesday
TOM STOCKILL FOR SUNDAY TIMES
Thomas, whose conviction was not overturned until 2021, said Tuesday he was “shocked” when he learned she had read about his case eight years earlier.
“No, what she said [at the select committee] was not true,” he said. ‘No, I didn’t know she had read it. I hope she understood what me and my family had been through. [but] all these things have been put in the drawer and no one has looked.
In another filing, sent in the same email, a subpostmistress wrote that she had been sentenced to 18 months in prison, that the Post Office had “lied to the court” and that she had pleaded guilty only in an attempt to avoid her sentence. Reduce. .
The October 2, 2013 email is the strongest indication yet that Vennells received and read important evidence about possible wrongful convictions during the crucial period when Horizon was under investigation.
Vennells, who led the post office between 2010 and 2019, will speak publicly about the scandal for the first time in a decade in her testimony to the public inquiry on Wednesday.
Nadhim Zahawi MP, a former chancellor who sat on the business panel in 2015, said: “I think the email and the tape will be seen as the smoking gun that is the cover-up that took place at the Post Office. .
“This latest revelation is as disturbing as it is unsurprising,” he told ITV News, which revealed the October 2013 email. “I hope that Ms Vennells will finally admit the truth so that the public can get to the bottom of this and those who have suffered get the justice they need.”
Lord Arbuthnot, who has campaigned for the sub-postmasters, said it proved Vennells “knew exactly what was going on”.
The multi-million pound house owned by Vennells. Some sub-postmasters lost their money and their savings
TIMES Newspapers LTD
The email containing the sub-postmasters’ applications, and a spreadsheet of dozens of others, was sent to Vennells by Second Sight, which conducted an independent investigation into Horizon and individual cases.
In a telephone conversation on the afternoon of October 2, 2013, the director, Ron Warmington, said: “Personally, I would like you and others to look at some of the applications received in due course. pick what I think are… the ones that tell the common story… that would probably be worth an hour’s worth of reading.’
In response, Vennells said: “Somebody send me an email. I’m more than happy to do that. Is it available?”
After taking down her email address, Warmington said, “Okay, I’ll do it right now.”
The case notes were sent at 4.04pm and Vennells responded with her email saying she had read the “disturbing” documents at 9.30pm.
The case of Lee Castleton, who was declared bankrupt at the civil court after the Post Office chased him for more than £25,000, was among those sent to Vennells. The expert witness in his case did not tell the court about Horizon bugs because he believed they were not relevant.
Castleton told ITV: “She [Paula Vennells] have never followed through on things – we need to find out why. Why were the cases shut down and not investigated?
“I hope she can reconcile everything herself. We have lost 251 sub-postmasters, four of them suicides. If I were her, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
“I just want her to tell the truth.”
Vennells was told by the Second Sight consultancy in 2013 that the sub-postmaster cases told “a common story”
FATHER
Vennells was also sent the application submitted by Pamela Stubbs, who was suspended and stripped of her post office after problems in the new Horizon IT system claimed she had lost £27,000.
“It makes me feel like Paula Vennells and the Post Office don’t care and that I don’t count as a person,” Stubbs said. “So many people have gotten information about me, but they haven’t done anything.”
Vennells has previously claimed that ‘post office lawyers considered every issue in the case [mediation] arrangement involving a conviction in order to assess whether anything had emerged from the arrangement [the] Post office was obliged to make public”.
She also confirmed that cases involving conviction were not mediated and claimants were instead told – two years after their original application – to apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which prepares cases for trial. courts of appeal.
“In those cases [the] The Post Office felt that the CCRC was the appropriate route, and indeed the only possible legal route, for the individual to challenge his conviction,” Vennells said.
She has previously claimed that she “truly feels sorry for the devastation caused to the subpostmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart as they were wrongly accused and wrongfully prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system.”