The Post Office made a confidential deal with Fujitsu 19 years ago to fix errors in post office operators’ accounts, a document has revealed, casting questions on claims made by the postal service that they were not aware of bugs that could cause accounting shortfalls.
Channel 4 News has obtained a contract between the two companies, overlooked despite being uploaded to the Post Office Inquiry’s website, which a forensic accountant who investigated the Horizon scandal has described as “dynamite”.
The 26-page agreement, made in 2006, shows both parties had authorisation to alter post office operators’ branch accounts, despite claims that it was not possible to remotely alter their balances.
The contract between the Post Office and Horizon, which was marked “Commercial in Confidence”, said Fujitsu was liable for penalty payments of £100-£150 per faulty transaction with the Horizon IT system.
The contract, which was found on the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry’s website, says: “If the reconciliation service identifies that any transaction data held on the ‘central database’ located at the data centre is found to be inconsistent when compared to the records of the transaction that was completed at the branch … the reconciliation service shall obtain authorisation from the Post Office prior to amending the centrally held transaction data.”
Paul Marshall, a senior barrister for post office operators, told the BBC, “The Post Office conducted both the criminal trials of postmasters and the group litigation of 2019 on the basis that it knew of no substantial problems with the Horizon system.
“Yet this shows that in 2006 there was a very big, recognised problem with Horizon maintaining data integrity between Post Office branch offices and Fujitsu.
“The Post Office, for 20 years, was saying the only explanation for shortfalls in branch accounts was postmaster incompetence or dishonesty.”
Wrongly-convicted former subpostmaster Lee Castleton OBE said it is "disgusting" that two decades on, these documents are being found.
In the long-running Post Office Horizon scandal, branch operators were accused of stealing money after shortfall emerged, hounded for filling in the missing amount, some jailed and even pushed to suicide by the actions of the Post Office.
There are more than 900 convictions of branch operators linked to the scandal.