Post Office criminal trials may not start until 2028, says police chief

In a statement to the BBC, the police officer, who led the investigation, may not be able to start until 2028 on his post office horizons.

“Teams need to be really meticulous and [pay] Pay attention to the details, but we’re actually making a real progress, CD CDR Stephen Clayman said.

The investigation detected seven suspects and has 45 to 50 potential suspects. However, the scandal, which is expected later this year, will not give files to prosecutors after the last report from the public investigation.

Former sub -mail manager Tim Brentnall said that the victims were “desperate to see some kind of accountability,” but added that the police should “do properly”.

The Horizon CT system, which started to operate in 1999, created incorrect deficiencies in post office branches, where Alt-Postmasters were held responsible.

More than 900 people were prosecuted and some went to jail. Some died while justice was waiting.

Last year, a law was passed to overthrow these convictions.

The criminal investigation of the scandal started in 2020 and met with two suspects in 2021.

After the publicly open stage of the investigation, which resulted in December last year, scaled the activity, and two people were carefully discussed that their answers could be used as evidence in court. Both were male in his 60s.

CDR Clayman, the police, “the front front of the post-mail inspectors, lawyers, immediately participating in the decision,” he said.

But he added: “We are starting to look at the wider management. This will be and happens, it will take time to reach there.”

He’s confident that there will be a criminal case, but he admits that the firsts cannot start until 2028.

Sir Wyn Williams, President of the Public Investigation, will publish the 1st volume of his latest report on July 8th and is expected to apply to Volume 2 later this year.

Then the police will pass “meticulously”, the crown prosecutor’s office will handle the files manually and wait for the court history, Cdr Cdr Clayman said.

“This is not rare,” he said. “There is exactly the same thing in the other major investigations linked to a public investigation. And I really understand the disappointment for the victims for those in the center.”

Old Sub -Postmaster Tim Brentnall Roch was prosecuted from Pembrokeshire when he was discovered at £ 22,500 in his branch in 2010. His conviction was overthrown in 2021.

“The post office’s way of prosecution was completely and completely wrong. [I was] He ran in front of the courts like a rabbit in the headlights and said I was the only person I was not in this position, “he said.

“But if the police have to take their time, they should take their time and do it properly.”

“The truth is that we have seen that the sub-postmaster died after a real accountability. The question that the Alt-Postmasters asked them is the question of where is the urgency in the heart of the police?”

There are 108 officers working on Olympos based on four regional center. CDR Clayman was talking at the metropolitan police center near a high -storey police office block in Sutton, south of London.

Officers spend most of their days walking around millions of numericalized documents that will form most of the evidence in cases.

They started with 1.5 million and more documents will rise to six million as they emerged.

PSNI and the police, such as Scotland, and every power in England and Wales.

CDR Clayman had criticized for not delivering the post office quickly enough, but now they were “quite good”. Fujitsu, “very cooperative,” he said.

“The post office spokesman said:” The post office has cooperated with the metropolitan police since the beginning of 2020 to provide all kinds of information he needed for his investigations, and we continue to do so, “he continued to do so.”