The secret investigation was uncovered through a BBC analysis of confidential government documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, from a time in 2015 and 2016 when the Post Office was under growing pressure to get to the bottom of sub-postmasters’ claims of injustice.
Mr Swift had found a briefing for the Post Office board from an earlier review in 2014, carried out by auditors from Deloitte and codenamed Project Zebra, detailing how Fujitsu could change branch accounts.
The sub-committee included chief executive Paula Vennells, general counsel Chris Aujard and Richard Callard, a senior civil servant at the government body which owned the Post Office.
It said the auditors had learned that authorised Fujitsu staff with the right database access privileges could use fake digital signatures or keys to delete, create or amend data on customer purchases that had been electronically signed by sub-postmasters.
The documents that have now been analysed by the BBC reveal that following the Panorama broadcast, Post Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe wrote to the incoming chairman, Tim Parker, asking him to give the concerns about possible miscarriages of justice his “earliest attention” and take any necessary action.
In his High Court judgment at the end of the sub-postmasters’ legal action in 2019, judge Sir Peter Fraser found the Post Office’s defence claim - that Fujitsu could not insert transactions in branch accounts - was “simply untrue”.
The original article contains 2,420 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The secret investigation was uncovered through a BBC analysis of confidential government documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, from a time in 2015 and 2016 when the Post Office was under growing pressure to get to the bottom of sub-postmasters’ claims of injustice.
Mr Swift had found a briefing for the Post Office board from an earlier review in 2014, carried out by auditors from Deloitte and codenamed Project Zebra, detailing how Fujitsu could change branch accounts.
The sub-committee included chief executive Paula Vennells, general counsel Chris Aujard and Richard Callard, a senior civil servant at the government body which owned the Post Office.
It said the auditors had learned that authorised Fujitsu staff with the right database access privileges could use fake digital signatures or keys to delete, create or amend data on customer purchases that had been electronically signed by sub-postmasters.
The documents that have now been analysed by the BBC reveal that following the Panorama broadcast, Post Office minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe wrote to the incoming chairman, Tim Parker, asking him to give the concerns about possible miscarriages of justice his “earliest attention” and take any necessary action.
In his High Court judgment at the end of the sub-postmasters’ legal action in 2019, judge Sir Peter Fraser found the Post Office’s defence claim - that Fujitsu could not insert transactions in branch accounts - was “simply untrue”.
The original article contains 2,420 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!