Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells accused of misleading government | ITV News

During our own investigations into

post

office

recordings we discovered what

boss

es knew but didn't say about glitches in the Horizon computer system. Now we have found more of the same in a letter from chief executive Paul de Venel to the minister responsible in At the time the minister was Joe Swinson, a Liberal Democrat in the coalition

government

, she told us that the letter it contained had misled her. Paul lenel wrote that there was no evidence that the sub

post

masters had been wrongfully convicted. The chief executive of the Paul vel post

office

, the courier. The office sent hundreds of sub-post Masters to prison while his

boss

assured everyone for years that there was no miscarriage of justice.

The investigations that have been carried out so far we have had no evidence of that, but the secret recordings obtained by the ATV

news

program Paula Venel to inform you that Paula has now joined us, yes, hello, they informed me about problems with your Horizon it system in 2013 and investigators warned them that they were not being transparent about remote access to branch accounts. What the press might interpret as a weasel phrase, um, it's extremely dangerous, you know when you say they didn't have access to the Horizon system, but they were actually passing inputs to live data, but you didn't ask that's really dangerous territory. , but she continued to deny there was any problem and in a letter to the

government

seen on television

news

18 months after those meetings which she duplicated on March 9, 2015, she wrote to then Post Office Minister Joe Swinson and stated with confidence that postal officials found no reason to conclude that any original processing was insecure. and that through these investigations no evidence has been found of any system-wide problems with Horizon Joe Winson told ITV News that Paul Avenel misled her in this letter and that the recordings do not match what she was told at the time and before that.

Letter from 2013 and 2014, lawyers hired by the post office found that unreliable evidence had been used to prosecute the subpostmasters, calling into question a series of convictions that Paul de Venel did not mention. This

former

minister says the letter could have serious consequences. Oh, it's incredibly. Seriously, she signed a letter addressed to Minister Joe Winton, her boss in government, which is clearly false and, what's more, it is clear that she knew it was false at the time she purged herself in front of to the investigation. She also misled the select committee, but what this shows in terms is that she wasn't telling the truth in 2015.

Wendy Buffy was wrongly convicted of false accounting in 2010, not only did she lose her post office, she lost her house on top of it while I was struggling to pay. Back, the £24,000 they said she owed, her conviction wasn't quashed until 2021, she fed us to the war wolves and, um, she deserves to be punished for that, it's all very well saying she didn't know, I have no idea that she was the CEO of that company Paul de Venel told us he will give evidence at the investigation and apologizes for the devastation caused to the subpostmasters the post office says it is completely focused on getting to the truth Daniel the letter from the one we're talking about the one you've seen was written in 20 15 take us through what was happening back then well this Nina is a key moment in the timeline of the slow motion car accident that became this Horizon scandal.

This letter was sent by Paul Lenel on March 9, 2015, like you. say effectively announcing to the government the end of the mediation plan, as we understand, the following day the Post Office wrote to Second Site to the independent investigators to announce that their contract would be terminated and that they would no longer be able to continue their investigation by the deputy directors. Post office workers who have campaigned for justice see this moment as a key moment because it is the moment when the post office they believe tried to shut everything down. No more mediation, no more effective investigations, no more to see, of course, now we know that this was the case.

It didn't work, it didn't work because of people like Alan Bates who didn't make it clear, the government at the time effectively took what the post office said at face value and didn't question it, we now know that from the recordings. that we have been showing in our programs in recent weeks that the post office said one thing in public and something different in private and this is key now to know what they knew and what they were told and when and the key to the investigation is to compare exactly what was said back then with what is said in evidence right now exactly and that's going to be a difficult task, as Paul said in his report, the key figures in the next few weeks will appear Paul Lenel and the boss. chief executives of chief executives at the post office it's going to be a big task there are thousands and thousands of documents hours and hours of recordings to go through here the truth has been elusive for the last 20 years I suspect it's going to happen next months will also be quite difficult, Daniel, thank you very much.