A former investigator for the Post Office has told the Horizon IT inquiry he “always thought” the accounting system was “robust” but acknowledged there were issues in some cases.
It was Jon Longman’s job for 12 years from 2000 to uncover crime committed by employees, including sub-postmasters, and it has since emerged that security advisers at the company were incentivised to seek prosecutions through bonuses for convictions.
Mr Longman, who gave evidence to the scandal inquiry remotely for medical reasons, said media articles made him aware of a growing number of complaints about the Horizon system, operated by Fujitsu.
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He was involved in a number of high profile cases, including that of West Byfleet sub-postmistress Seema Misra who was jailed for 15 months in 2010 – a conviction that was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2021.
Mr Longman said he agreed that a proven issue with the Horizon system in a previous case should have been disclosed to her, assisting the work of her defence team.
Commenting more widely on his investigative work, Mr Longman’s witness statement added: “At the time, I do not believe that I considered a challenge to the Horizon system in one case to be relevant to other cases.
“As explained earlier in this statement, it was never confirmed to me that there was a definite fault with the Horizon
system. As such, I was under the impression that the system was operating as expected.”
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Mr Longman admitted suspicions of a fault with Horizon in the case of Jennifer O’Dell, who was wrongly accused of stealing more than £9,600.
He added that cost was a factor in the decision not to request transaction data from Fujitsu in her case, placing a greater burden on her defence team to fight the theft charges.
