Leaked letter boosts Shropshire postmistress's bid to clear her name

Rubbina Shaheen, who kept Greenfields Post Office in Shrewsbury, was jailed for 12 months in 2010 for false accounting after initially being accused of stealing £43,000.

She is one of 100 sub-postmasters and mistresses across the country who are seeking to overturn convictions or court rulings which relate to financial irregularities they say are down to the Post Office's controversial Horizon computer system.

Mrs Shaheen is hoping that her case will now be strengthened after an investigation by the BBC's Panorama programme claimed that another postmistress was prosecuted in similar circumstances, despite the Post Office's own criminal investigator failing to find evidence of theft.

Jo Hamilton, from South Warnborough in Hampshire, was prosecuted after having problems with the Horizon system.

But the Panorama investigation claimed it had seen Post Office letters that accepted the losses at Mrs Hamilton's branch were probably caused by "operational errors" and not theft.

Mrs Hamilton and Mrs Shaheen were both initially charged with both theft and false accounting, but in both cases the theft charges were dropped on condition that they pleaded guilty to the less serious charges.

Mrs Hamilton was accused of stealing £36,000 from her branch in South Warnborough, Hampshire, in 2006.

However, Panorama investigators said they had seen documents showing that the Post Office's own criminal investigator wrote: "Having analysed the Horizon printouts and accounting documentation, I was unable to find any evidence of theft or that the cash figures had been deliberately inflated."

Mrs Shaheen, who is 50, said it showed how the Post Office went ahead with the prosecutions, despite a lack of evidence.

She added: "The Post Office has now admitted there were 'operational errors' and that two bugs were found."

Like Mrs Shaheen, Mrs Hamilton said she found Horizon difficult to operate and she couldn't understand why the computer kept showing cash missing.

"I rang the help desk and said I'm £2,000 down and she said well you can do this, this, this. So I did exactly what she said and it doubled, so then I was £4,000 down," she said.

Mrs Hamilton said that under her Post Office contract she had to pay back any shortfall. She eventually stopped putting in her own cash and signed off the accounts anyway – without officially declaring the missing money.

After the Post Office discovered the £36,000 shortfall she was charged with theft and false accounting.

Mrs Hamilton says she was scared of going to prison so agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge. She was given a 12-month community order.

A team of forensic accountants hired by the Post Office said the Horizon system, which logs all transactions at each branch, was "not always fit for purpose" and that the "vast majority" of sub-postmasters who had been taken to court were likely to be innocent.

Ron Warmington, of Second Sight, which carried out the investigation for the Post Office, accused the Post Office of misrepresenting its findings.

Second Sight's Ian Henderson added that a common factor was that many cases began with theft and false accounting charges, with the theft charge being dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to false accounting.

The Post Office said it could not comment on individual cases due to confidentiality, but that a financial loss and false accounting together was often sufficient evidence for a theft charge.

The Post Office criticised the Panorama programme for its use of "partial, selective and misleading information". It said only a tiny proportion of postmasters have complained about the Horizon system.

In a statement, the Post Office added: "The Post Office does not prosecute people for making innocent mistakes and never has.

"There is no evidence that faults with the computer system caused money to go missing at these Post Office branches.

"There is overwhelming evidence that the losses complained of were caused by user actions, including deliberate, dishonest conduct."

The Post Office said it would co-operate fully with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

"It will be provided with all available information including confidential legal material not available to others and we believe the CCRC should be allowed to complete its reviews without external comment.

"We also gave a commitment of confidentiality to people who put forward cases to us for re-investigation."