The Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry has revealed that Angela van den Bogerd, an executive at the Post Office, was involved in hiding issues with the company’s IT system. This included providing misleading information to the courts. During a court battle between subpostmasters and the Post Office, it was discovered that Van den Bogerd had misled High Court judge Peter Fraser in 2019. Fraser stated that she had given him deceptive evidence and attempted to obscure the truth. Furthermore, evidence presented in the inquiry indicated that Van den Bogerd had been aware of the ability to access the Horizon system remotely prior to 2018, despite initially claiming otherwise in court. This revelation raises questions about the fairness of many subpostmasters’ prosecutions, as the Post Office had previously denied the existence of remote access until the 2018/19 court case. Additionally, it was revealed that the Post Office only examined remote access for changes made in the online version of Horizon, which was introduced in 2010. The legacy Horizon system, used from 1999 onwards, was not thoroughly analyzed due to cost and complexity. However, subpostmasters had been reporting issues with Horizon since its implementation in 1999. The Post Office Horizon scandal was initially exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, shedding light on the challenges faced by several subpostmasters due to accounting software discrepancies.
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