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Ismay: the Idiot Returns
Read More…: Ismay: the Idiot ReturnsRod Ismay’s role in the Post Office was senior – he finished as Head of Product and Branch Accounting reporting directly to the Chief Finance Officer. He appears to have taken a leading, or as Jason Beer KC would have it “co-ordinating” role in responding to Horizon challenges throughout his career at the Post Office. This went well beyond his authorship of the disastrous Ismay report, which the Post Office relied on to keep prosecuting Subpostmasters for at least two years. I’ve written here about Ismay’s first stint at giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Today, almost…
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The One Thing Brian Altman Did Wrong
Read More…: The One Thing Brian Altman Did WrongBrian Altman’s role in perpetuating the Post Office scandal is self-evident. He gave advice which helped a bent client keep a lid on a gargantuan miscarriage of justice. Whether that was down to any professional failings was in issue today. Altman had sight of clear evidence of criminal activity (orders to shred documents, misleading a court), massive failures of disclosure (the Misra case), prosecutor misconduct (the Hamilton case), yet he somehow managed to give advices (and, later, set court strategies) which were neatly in line with his client’s wishes. “Do you think that you might have been set up?” asked…
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Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe): Sir Humphrey would be proud
Read More…: Belinda Cortes-Martin (Crowe): Sir Humphrey would be proudBelinda Cortes-Martin had a dual role. Whilst she was supposedly heading up the Post Office’s Complaint and Mediation Scheme’s Working Group secretariat, supporting and answering to the Working Group’s independent Chair, Sir Anthony Hooper (a retired Court of Appeal judge), Cortes-Martin was also Programme Director for Project Sparrow, the top secret Post Office body set up to control the Complaint and Mediation Scheme (CMS), run by the Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells. If you think I’m over-egging how secret Project Sparrow was, during the High Court litigation in 2018, the Post Office tried to claim the very word Sparrow was…
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Keeping their knees on Seema’s neck
Read More…: Keeping their knees on Seema’s neckToday we got some insight into the catastrophic and frankly sinister failings of a group of lawyers at the heart of the Post Office scandal. The lengths Brian Altman (then) QC et al went to to avoid their post-conviction disclosure duties to former Subpostmaster Seema Misra (who was sent to prison whilst eight weeks pregnant) are mind-boggling. Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins had given expert evidence at Seema Misra’s 2010 trial without disclosing his knowledge of bugs, errors and defects within the Post Office’s Horizon system. In June 2013, Simon Clarke, an in-house barrister at Cartwright King (who prosecuted Subpostmasters on…
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Martin Smith and the Instruction to Shred
Read More…: Martin Smith and the Instruction to ShredThe mystery of who at the Post Office (or Bond Dickinson) decided to shred minutes relating to an important meeting at the Post Office to discuss problems with the Horizon IT system got a little more dramatic today as Martin Smith, a solicitor working for Cartwright King, gave evidence. Smith was a prosecuting solicitor who took on Post Office cases under instruction from the Post Office. He had no training in the role having been a duty defence solicitor who then joined Cartwright King and moved to Post Office prosecutions after Cartwright King won the Post Office contract. Smith was…
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What Hugh Didn’t Do
Read More…: What Hugh Didn’t DoHugh Flemington is a very careful man. The former Post Office Head of Legal spent his morning in the Inquiry witness chair characterising his involvement in the Post Office scandal as accidental, at best. The problem was, the documents do seem to suggest he was involved at some level, though he couldn’t recall how. He didn’t remember doing things and mostly he didn’t remember not doing things and if he didn’t do something it wasn’t a failing on his part, it just hadn’t occurred to him at the time. The tone was set quite early on when barrister for the…
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Post Office rewarded director after she lied in court
Read More…: Post Office rewarded director after she lied in courtDamning evidence about the culture within the Post Office at the very highest level was brought to light during the course of Angela van den Bogerd’s second and likely final day of evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today. You can read my live-tweets and see the screenshots of documents posted up during the hearing here. For a summary of the lowlights, read on. “Take a step back from the answer of an automaton” Van den Bogerd started her career behind the counter of a Crown Office branch in 1985 just after leaving school. She rose to Director…
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The First Lady of Flat Earth
Read More…: The First Lady of Flat EarthIt is possible that Angela van den Bogerd and her senior colleagues (Rodric Williams, Mark Davies, Susan Crichton, Chris Aujard, Jarnail Singh, Patrick Bourke) were just not very bright. They were all aware of evidence which pointed to the exact opposite of what they were telling MPs, Subpostmasters and journalists about potential miscarriages of justice and the Horizon IT system, but they somehow didn’t join up the dots or make the connection. And by not making the connection, they could carry on persuading themselves campaigning Subpostmasters were wrong, or lying, or criminals. If you want to scroll through today’s evidence…
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Former Post Office Hatchet Man gives himself the chop
Read More…: Former Post Office Hatchet Man gives himself the chopChris Aujard answered questions at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry yesterday. The day before, he resigned as General Counsel for five separate companies, and the day before that, he chucked it in at another. Is it mere coincidence he ceased to be an active director of any UK company within 48 hours of giving evidence at the Inquiry? Perhaps we should be told. FNZ’s insurers almost certainly were. Aujard’s former employers, FNZ Wealth (and its various subsidiaries) and iProtect Technologies also appear to have scrubbed any mention of Aujard from their websites. Though FNZ does maintain some delightful guff…
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The Hatchet Man: Aujard gives evidence
Read More…: The Hatchet Man: Aujard gives evidenceChris Aujard presents as thoughtful, intelligent and professional – a very different person to the one boasting about his crisis management skills shortly after leaving the Post Office in 2015. Older and wiser, perhaps, or better at image projection. Aujard was involved in a deliberate attempt to frustrate Second Sight’s independent investigation into the Post Office, so I’m not going to apportion him much credit, but given some of the truly appalling human beings who have provided evidence to the Inquiry in recent months (hi, Rodric) he did, at least, deserve to be taken seriously. Aujard’s great revelation was about…
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