More time for Shrewsbury post office ‘theft’ probe
A team of experts investigating claims that a Shrewsbury postmistress was wrongly jailed for financial discrepancies caused by a computer glitch had extended its inquiries.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is looking into the cases of 27 sub-postmasters convicted of financial irregularities which they blame on the Post Office's computer system.
One of them is Rubbina Shaheen, who kept Greenfields Post Office in Shrewsbury before she was jailed in 2010.
Mrs Shaheen had been accused of stealing £43,000 from the business. The theft charge was dropped, but she was sentenced to 12 months in prison after admitting false accounting as part of a plea-bargain deal.
But since her release, Mrs Shaheen has protested her innocence, saying the discrepancy was caused by the controversial Horizon computer system.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is now re-examining her case after hundreds of other postmasters came forward saying they had experienced similar problems.
A team of forensic accountants called in to look at the claims has completed its initial findings, and has decided to carry out further investigations.
Investigation
A spokesman for the CCRC said: "We wrote to all involved to tell them that we had received provisional findings for the forensic accountants and that these provisional results had given rise to some further inquiries.
The Post Office, which says there is not a problem with the Horizon system, had previously commissioned an investigation by forensic accountants Second Sight.
The CCRC added that more information would be sent to the sub-postmasters involved by the end of May 2018.
Second Sight’s report, published in 2015, said Horizon was “not always fit for purpose”, and said the Post Office was too quick to take legal action against postmasters. But the Post Office rejected the findings, and instead published its own 83-page report rebutting the claims.
In an unrelated action, more than 500 sub-postmasters – not including Mrs Shaheen – are taking group litigation against the Post Office over alleged glitches in the Horizon system.
They claim the system created records of money that never existed, leading in some cases to false allegations of theft or false accounting.
