Charging decisions relating to lawyers involved in the Post Office scandal are not expected to be made until late 2027, it has been revealed.
The police team investigating the Horizon IT scandal yesterday revealed that they have interviewed five individuals under caution and will interview three or four in the first quarter of next year.
Those interviewed come from a pool of 53 people of interest identified by investigators as part of phase one of the police inquiry. This phase is focused on civil and criminal lawyers working for the Post Office in the past 25 years as well as investigators and members of the Post Office security team.
But the National Police Chiefs’ Council said it is likely to wait until the Post Office Inquiry makes its second report into the scandal before making recommendations to the Crown Prosecution Service. That report is not expected until next year, pushing charging decisions well into 2027.
Charging decisions related to phase two, looking into the role of executives involved with the Post Office, would be made later still.
Commander Stephen Clayman, who leads the Operation Olympos team, told a press conference that he appreciated that victims wanted a resolution to cases as quickly as possible but it took time to get cases up to the criminal standard of proof. ‘The danger [with going quicker] is we shortcut and then run into problems,’ he added.
Officers are ruling out bringing fraud charges for now and are focusing instead on investigating potential cases of perjury and perverting the course of justice. Advice is also being taken on whether to look into possible charges of corporate or gross negligence, although officers believe there is a high bar for these offences.
Clayman confirmed that the Operation Olympos team is able to speak with police forces abroad, as people who may be of interest live in other jurisdictions.
Operation Olympos was set up in January 2020 amid concerns about the conduct of Post Office and Fujitsu, which developed and installed the Horizon software. Between 2000 and 2017, Post Office initiated private prosecutions resulting in 700 convictions, largely based on evidence produced by the flawed IT system. It is regarded as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British legal history, with allegations that the Post Office knowingly used discrepancies recorded on the Horizon system to take action against sub postmasters.
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