Business reporter
BBCCriminal trials over the Post Office Horizon IT scandal may not start until 2028, the police officer leading the investigation has told the BBC.
“The teams need to be really meticulous and [pay] attention to detail, but actually we are making some real progress,” Met Cdr Stephen Clayman said.
The investigation has identified seven suspects, and has 45 to 50 potential suspects in view. But it will not hand files to prosecutors until after the final report from the public inquiry into the scandal is published, expected later this year.
Former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall said victims were “desperate to see some kind of accountability”, but added the police should “do it properly”.
The Horizon IT system, which began operating in 1999, falsely created shortfalls in Post Office branches for which sub-postmasters were held liable.
More than 900 people were prosecuted, and some went to prison. Some died while waiting for justice.
Last year a law was passed to overturn those convictions en masse.
The criminal investigation into the scandal, Operation Olympos, began in 2020, and interviewed two suspects in 2021.
It scaled up activity after the public phase of the inquiry concluded in December last year, and another two people were interviewed under caution, where their answers can be used as evidence in court. Both were men in their 60s.
Cdr Clayman said the police started with “those at the front line – the Post Office investigators, solicitors, those who were involved in the immediate decision-making”.
But he added: “We are beginning to scope looking at wider management. That will happen, and is happening, it will just take time to get there.”
He is confident there will be criminal trials, but admits that the first ones may not start until 2028.
The chair of the public inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, will publish Volume 1 of his final report on 8 July and is expected to file Volume 2 later this year.
Then the police will have to go through it “meticulously”, hand files to the Crown Prosecution Service, and wait for a court date, said Cdr Clayman.
“This isn’t uncommon,” he said. “Other large investigations linked to a public inquiry have exactly the same thing. And I really do understand the frustration for those who are at the centre of this, who are the victims.”
Former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall from Roch, Pembrokeshire, was prosecuted in 2010 when a £22,500 shortfall was discovered at his branch. His conviction was overturned in 2021.
“The way the Post Office prosecuted me was completely and wholly wrong, [I was] rushed in front of the courts like a rabbit in the headlights and told I was the only one in this position when I wasn’t,” he said.
“But if the police have to take their time, they should take their time and do it properly.”
David Enright, a lawyer whose firm Howe and Co represented seven out of the 10 sub-postmasters who took part in the inquiry, said: “The fact is we have seen sub-postmaster after sub-postmaster die without ever seeing any true accountability. The question sub-postmasters ask themselves is: where is the urgency at the heart of the police investigation?”
There are 108 officers working on Olympos, based in four regional hubs. Cdr Clayman was speaking at the Metropolitan Police’s hub near the top of a high-rise police office block in Sutton, South London.
The officers spend much of their days trawling through the millions of digitised documents which will make up much of the evidence in the cases.
They began with 1.5 million, and that is set to rise to six million as more documents come to light.
Every force in England and Wales are involved, as are the PSNI and Police Scotland.
Cdr Clayman had earlier been critical of the Post Office for not handing information over fast enough, but said they were now being “quite good”. Fujitsu, he said, were being “very co-operative”.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “The Post Office has co-operated fully and openly with the Metropolitan Police since early 2020 to provide whatever information it needs for its investigations, and we continue to do so.”
