Police are planning to deploy 80 detectives for their criminal inquiry into the Post Office scandal, the Guardian has learned, but victims will face a long wait to discover if charges will follow.
The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu.
Police have already started discussions with prosecutors about the investigation and potential criminal charges, which stem from the possibility that post office operators were wrongly prosecuted for stealing when bosses allegedly knew their computer accounting system could be flawed.
Police will not seek charging decisions, that is send files of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service, until after the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal concludes, which is expected in autumn 2025.
Since 2020, the Metropolitan police has been leading the investigation but the scale of the potential crimes and the fact so many cases are outside the London area has led to the plan to establish a national operation.
Stephen Clayman, the Met commander, said: “A team of detectives has been painstakingly working through millions of documents manually and with the help of specialist software, in parallel with the public inquiry.
The original article contains 665 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Police are planning to deploy 80 detectives for their criminal inquiry into the Post Office scandal, the Guardian has learned, but victims will face a long wait to discover if charges will follow.
The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu.
Police have already started discussions with prosecutors about the investigation and potential criminal charges, which stem from the possibility that post office operators were wrongly prosecuted for stealing when bosses allegedly knew their computer accounting system could be flawed.
Police will not seek charging decisions, that is send files of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service, until after the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal concludes, which is expected in autumn 2025.
Since 2020, the Metropolitan police has been leading the investigation but the scale of the potential crimes and the fact so many cases are outside the London area has led to the plan to establish a national operation.
Stephen Clayman, the Met commander, said: “A team of detectives has been painstakingly working through millions of documents manually and with the help of specialist software, in parallel with the public inquiry.
The original article contains 665 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!