A suspended Post Office manager is back at work while the Metropolitan Police probe allegations that they told staff to destroy evidence linked to the continuing inquiry. The Post Office’s internal investigation, called Project Acer, was recently detailed in a document released to the public.
Rachel Scarrabelotti, the current company secretary, made some serious claims in her witness statement. She mentioned that a senior staff member allegedly instructed their team to hide or destroy information relevant to the inquiry and also engaged in inappropriate behavior. It turns out this situation has escalated to a police investigation. Initially, the Post Office claimed it had reached out to the police. However, the inquiry documents revealed it was the inquiry itself that notified the Met about potential offenses, including possible obstruction of justice.
As of August, the Post Office stated it was gathering information to help the Met understand around 2,000 hardcopy files related to these allegations. They aimed to figure out if there had been any interference with these files or any motives behind it. Additional claims surfaced, highlighting that the same individual allegedly displayed racial discrimination towards South Asian subpostmasters and staff. However, after an internal review, the Post Office concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to support this claim. The police then agreed that the manager could return to work since there’s no clear timeline for the criminal investigation.
The Post Office mentioned they would discuss the manager’s role and set controls while the Met reviewed the evidence.
When asked about the manager’s return, the Post Office declined to comment on specific employment issues. The document indicated that the Met acknowledges their responsibility to report to the inquiry, not the Post Office, and stressed that they control the timeline for this investigation.
The police inquiry began in January 2020, sparked by a High Court ruling in 2019 that confirmed the accounting errors blamed on subpostmasters were due to bugs in the Horizon software. The scandal first came to light in 2009, through revelations by Computer Weekly, detailing the struggles of several subpostmasters and marking the largest miscarriage of justice in British history.