The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Rishi Sunak, announced today a law that will overturn the verdicts against more than 900 post office employees unjustly convicted of theft and fraud, which were, however, the result of a faulty computer system.
Sunak said that it was a scandal and "one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history of our country" that hundreds of postmen were convicted between 1999 and 2015 for allegedly stealing money, but it turned out that the post office's computers had wrongly displayed deficiencies in their branches.
Out of 900, only 95 managed to prove their innocence. A number were in prison, many were financially bankrupt because they were forced to pay large monetary damages to the Post Office, and some even committed suicide.
The real culprit was the defective accounting software package Horizont, obtained from the Japanese company Fujitsu.
Sunak told MPs that he would pass a new law to ensure that those wrongly convicted are "quickly declared innocent and compensated".
The government will pay 75.000 pounds (87.000 euros) each to all the injured parties who filed a lawsuit against the Post Office, Sunak added.
The police opened an investigation into the fraud at the Post Office, but so far no one from the company or from Fujitsu has been arrested or charged.
The public investigation is ongoing from 2022.
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