Ex-Fujitsu executive says he feels ‘aggrieved’ by damage done to Horizon’s reputation | Post Office Horizon scandal
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A former chief executive of Fujitsu, the company that developed the Post Office’s Horizon IT system, told a public inquiry he felt “hurt” that what he believed to be a “good system” had been brought into such disrepute by the scandal. and said he believed the “real problem” was the way the state agency handled the prosecution of postal operators.
Richard Christou, the former chief executive and executive chairman of Fujitsu Services Holdings, testified at the inquiry, which is looking into why the Post Office chased and ruined hundreds of people claiming financial shortfalls in their post office accounts. Despite the campaigns, it it took years The Postal Service has to admit that Horizon’s mistakes are behind many of the shortcomings.
Christou, who was CEO between 2000 and 2004, was asked why not Fujitsu whistleblowers raised concerns with him about the ability of Fujitsu staff to remotely access the Horizon IT system and alter the accounts of post office operators’ branches.
Flora Page, a lawyer representing a number of post office operators, asked him: “Why were there no whistleblowers for Fujitsu? Why didn’t anyone show up?’
Christou told the inquest he took issue with the description of “tampering” with branch accounts. “First of all, I don’t like the word tampering – it’s a pejorative term,” he told the hearing.
“Secondly, my understanding is — and I didn’t know anything about it particularly at the time — that these changes were made in connection with the Post Office to correct various problems, that’s what I saw coming out of the evidence … Why are there no individuals, whistleblowers? You should ask potential whistleblowers at Fujitsu. Nobody came up to me and blew the whistle.”
Christou added: “I’m not discounting the fact that there was a gross miscarriage of justice and if you think I don’t sympathize with the superintendents and sub-postmasters, you’re wrong, I do,” he said.
“I feel bitter that what I thought was a good system was disgraced, but I am not responsible for that.” I have said before that the real problem is the way prosecutions and information flows are conducted. Why there were no whistleblowers and what they would have told me… I don’t know, he said.
The first person to come forward as a whistleblower was former Fujitsu employee Richard Rolle, who gave an interview to the BBC’s Panorama about Horizon in 2015.
Christou said in evidence that he was unaware of the prosecution of post office operators and said he had always considered the Horizon IT system deployment one of Fujitsu’s “big successes” and the post office as a “satisfied customer”. .
More than 700 post office operators were wrongfully prosecuted by the Post Office and given criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 because the Horizon system showed money was missing from their branches.
On Wednesday night, it was reported that the Postal Service had accidentally released the names and home addresses of 555 postal operators wrongfully convicted in the Horizon scandal.
The Daily Mail said the file, which purported to show details of participants in the 2019 postal trial, including their postcodes, was on the website in full on Wednesday but was later removed.
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A Post Office spokesman said: “The document in question has been removed from our website. We are investigating as a matter of urgency how it came to be published.
“We are in the process of notifying the Information Commissioner’s Office of the incident, in accordance with our regulatory requirements.”
Christou’s former colleague Duncan Tait, former chief executive of Fujitsu Services Ltd, told the inquest that he told Paula Vennells, then Post Office chief executive, that the Horizon IT system was like “Fort Knox”. Tate agreed he made the comment but told the hearing it was not about remote access to the IT system, but part of Fujitsu’s offices in Berkshire.
“Contrary to what she says in her letter, my comment was not about remote access to transaction data, but about physical access to … the developer area in Bracknell and the cyber security of the system,” he said.
The investigation continues.
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