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A former Post Office executive has denied misleading the Supreme Court about the extent to which she knew about remote access in the Horizon scandal, despite receiving multiple briefings on the issue over a five-year period.
Angela Van Den Bogerd told a public inquiry on Thursday that she did not intentionally make false statements in court in March 2019 about her knowledge that Horizon software provider Fujitsu could remotely change post office transaction data.
She had told the court that she had only been made aware of the Japanese company’s remote access powers “in the last year or so”. But Jason Beer KC, the inquiry’s lawyer, provided Van Den Bogerd with emails from 2010 to 2014 showing she had been informed this was possible.
“I didn’t believe it at the time,” said Van Den Bogerd when asked whether she had given false information in court. “I don’t really remember receiving those emails. . . I wish I had remembered that information.”
More than 900 subpostmasters have been convicted in cases involving data from Fujitsu’s flawed Horizon IT system after it was introduced in 1999, including 700 from the post office itself.
Van Den Bogerd, who worked at the post office in various roles between 1985 and 2020, apologized to the victims of the scandal. “I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to you, your family and your friends,” she said.
The public inquiry will hear evidence from Postal Service executives before it concludes this summer, as MPs consider unprecedented legislation to provide mass relief to affected sub-postmasters in England and Wales.
Post office branch managers successfully argued in the 2019 Supreme Court case that they could not be held solely responsible for any shortfalls because third-party access was possible, a claim the post office had previously rejected.
The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case that several “bugs, errors and deficiencies” meant there was a “substantial risk” that Horizon was responsible for the inaccurate data used in the prosecutions against the post office.
Recent findings from the investigation have shown that Post Office executives had multiple opportunities to acknowledge flaws in the Horizon system, but prioritized preserving the state-owned company’s reputation.
Lord Justice Fraser, the judge in the 2019 case, was critical of his judgment on Van Den Bogerd in light of her testimony. In two cases he found that “she did not give me open statements and tried to obscure the matter and mislead me.”
Van Den Bogerd was involved in overseeing a “spot audit” of post offices carried out between 2012 and 2013 by forensic accounting firm Second Sight following complaints from MPs and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance campaign group.
The Second Sight review examined a number of errors and deficiencies in the Horizon system and concluded in 2013 that some of the errors could be responsible for accounting losses.
Investigators criticized the Postal Service’s handling of complaints from subpostmasters, while executives accused them of drawing biased conclusions.
Earlier this week, the inquiry heard that the Post’s former chief executive, Paula Vennells, had complained that her general counsel had put professional duties ahead of the company’s interests by failing to control the investigation.
Vennells wrote in a meeting note that Susan Crichton, who served as a corporate attorney between 2010 and 2013, “may have been more faithful to her professional conduct requirements.”
Crichton said during his testimony Tuesday that Vennells and other executives did not appreciate the nature of the investigation. “I don’t think she understood my point that this has to be an independent review, we can’t manage it or manipulate it,” she said.