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Ten Bobsworth wrote:Lesley Sewell is not one of the more familiar names in the Post Office saga, so today's proceedings at th'Inquiry didn't seem too promising.
Geordie lass, Mrs Sewell must have thought her boat had come in when she landed a highly paid job at the Post Office having spent the previous 25 years at the Northern Rock before it capsized on the rocks. Out of the frying pan and into the fire you might say if you weren't too bothered about mixing metaphors
Five years later, after it seemed that like Susan Crichton she had been cold-shouldered by the ruling gang at POL, Lesley was also on her way out. Unlike most of the cold fish that have emerged during the proceedings, Mrs Sewell seemed genuinely upset by the whole shamozzle.
The proceedings wound up with focus on Paula Vennells seemingly harrassing Lesley Sewell by phone and text 5/6 years after Mrs S had left the employ of POL. It resulted in Mrs S blocking POL's CEO but we were left a little in the dark about what PV had hoped to gain by all this.
Maybe we'll find out more next week.
Clearly because Vennells was trying to plan to wriggle out of as much shit as possible heading her way after it was shortly going to be hitting the fan with the impending Parliamentary inquiry and High Court cases!
(Still think TPTB had their hands all over it from the start in 1999 or has the reality of Vennells et al not reporting Horizons 'bugs' (and flowing from that all the unsafe convictions) upwards to the PO Board and government. with all the facts known to us so far showing that to be the case, not relevant in your world?).
Ms Sewell, who worked at the Post Office between 2010 and 2015, said in her witness statement that Ms Vennells contacted her from a personal email account on 8 March 2020 - a year after she had resigned as chief executive.
Ms Sewell said that in the email, which has been passed to the inquiry, Ms Vennells said she had "been asked at short notice to appear before a BEIS Select Committee on all things Horizon/Sparrow and need to plug some memory gaps! My hope is this might help avoid an independent inquiry but to do so, I need to be well prepared".
I had not spoken to Paula since I had left the Post Office in 2015," she added.
Project Sparrow was a sub-committee that dealt with Horizon issues and eventually got rid of forensic accountants who had found bugs in the faulty system.
Ms Sewell said that they spoke on the phone later that day and she made notes.
The witness statement also indicates that, ahead of a 2021 Court of Appeal hearing, Ms Vennells was aware of a 2014 report by Deloitte which showed remote access to sub-postmasters’ accounts was possible.
The report, codenamed "Project Zebra", was not disclosed ahead of a group litigation in 2018 brought by campaigner Alan Bates and 554 other sub-postmasters.
Ms Sewell says Ms Vennells contacted her again on 12 April 2021 via text message, requesting a call, and that she made notes.
“I can see from my notes that there is reference to the Project Zebra Deloitte report and a reference to a call to Gareth James of Deloitte, who I recall was the lead on this project who I worked with a lot. I cannot recall why he was mentioned. I do not know what is meant by ‘lawyers say we didn't do anything about it’.”
Her witness statement also indicates that the Post Office wanted to publish Deloitte’s Project Zebra report but the audit firm was only willing to do this if it was "massively caveated".
Ms Sewell said her notes also say “PV got jumpy” but she could not recall what this was a reference to.
The witness statement said her notes from that phone call also refer to the upcoming Court of Appeal case on 23 April 2021.
She wrote: "I can also see that I have made reference to 'Deloitte report said that transactions could be amended/changed?' and have added 'not my understanding'.
"At the time of writing this note, my understanding of the Deloitte findings was that only one balancing transaction had taken place."
Ms Sewell said that "Paula contacted me on four occasions in total"
"I recall blocking her number after the last call as I did not feel comfortable with her contacting me."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm5454yypxxo
Court of Appeal case on 23 April 2021.
Judges have quashed the convictions of 39 former postmasters after the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice.
At the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office "knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon" and had a "clear duty to investigate" the system's defects.
But the Post Office "consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable" and "effectively steamrolled over any sub-postmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy", the judge added.
The Court of Appeal also allowed the appeals on the basis that their prosecutions were an affront to justice - a decision that allows for the possibility of further claims for compensation against the Post Office.
Full article here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56859357
