Compensation. A billion pounds for British postmen
Several heads of post offices in the United Kingdom received damages of over one billion pounds (1.19 billion euros) as victims of false accusations, data published by the London Government, according to AFP, shows.
From 1999 to 2015, almost a thousand heads of Post Office, the Public Post Office, were accused of theft and charged based on wrong information provided by Horizon an accounting program produced by Fujitsu. They were forced to pay unrealized benefits created erroneously, and many became ruined; Some also made prison.
The program has made thousands of other victims, AFP reminds.
In January 2024, a series broadcast by the ITV channel about the fight in justice by one of the postmen, named Alan Bates, brought to the attention of that scandal.
Subsequently, several convictions were canceled, and an investigation committed studied the file described by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as ‘one of the biggest judicial errors in history’.
The figures published Monday by the Ministry of Commerce show that ‘until June 2, 2025, 1.04 billion pounds (by the Government and Post Office) were paid to over 7300 persons’, following over 11,000 complaints.
For example, 167 million pounds (198 million euros) received 416 former chiefs of post offices, including Bates, who managed to win the processes intended by Post Office; 245 million have obtained 463 posts unjustly convicted, before being exempted last year on the basis of a special law; 68 million were paid to 71 convicts rehabilitated by justice.
The general director of Post Office, Neil Brocklehurst, welcomed payments, adding that ‘every week, more and more people receive the final settlement and can start to look beyond this painful chapter of their lives’.
Bates, who was ennobled this year by King Charles, criticized the way the damages were granted last month, showing that he was proposed to have an amount that did not represent half as he asked.
At the beginning of January, a parliamentary commission also condemned the complexity and slowness of the payment mechanism.
