I am not a mafia gangster, Post Office investigator tells Horizon inquiry

An investigator who helped falsely convict some of the post office operators has denied claims of behaving like a “mafia gangster” seeking to collect “bounty with … threats and lies” in his evidence to the public inquiry into the scandal.

Stephen Bradshaw, who remains employed by the Post Office – where he has worked since 1978 – admitted to accusing one female victim under investigation of telling him a “pack of lies” and telling another that she should “get up earlier” to run her branch.

He also admitted to signing witness statements, which he had not written, testifying to the reliability of the Horizon IT system , but which had been drafted by external lawyers and the head of the Post Office’s press office.

A total of 900 post office operators between 1999 and 2015 were convicted of crimes relating to theft, false accounting and fraud, based on faulty information from Horizon, which erroneously suggested that money had gone missing from post office branch accounts.

Of those, 95 cases have been overturned in the court of appeal, but on Wednesday the government said it would legislate to exonerate all of those involved after a public outcry over the scandal.

The Post Office has been accused of maliciously prosecuting the workers, but Bradshaw denied claims contained in witness statements submitted to the inquiry of “bullying” behaviour during the interviews he conducted with the accused under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

Jacqueline McDonald, who was sentenced in 2011 to 18 months’ imprisonment and handed a confiscation order for the sum of £99,759.60, had accused Post Office investigators, including Bradshaw, of “behaving like mafia gangsters” in her statement.

The chair of the Post Office inquiry, former high court judge Sir Wyn Williams. Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry/PA

The inquiry, led by the retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams, heard extracts of an interview Bradshaw conducted with McDonald. Bradshaw had asked her to tell him what happened to the money, to which she responded: “I don’t know where the money is, I’ve told you.” He had responded: “You have told me a pack of lies.”

Julian Blake, counsel for the inquiry, suggested it was language “you might see in the 1970s television detective show”.

Bradshaw responded that the interview had not been seen as “oppressive” by the defence when the case came to trial. He also denied telling McDonald that she was the only one using the Horizon system to suffer apparent shortages.

“I refute the allegation that I am a liar,” he told the inquiry, adding: “Ms Jacqueline McDonald is also incorrect in stating Post Office investigators behaved like mafia gangsters looking to collect their bounty with the threats and lies.”

McDonald’s conviction was subsequently overturned but she was forced to file for bankruptcy and left the country after serving time in prison.

Bradshaw was also accused by a Merseyside post office operator, Rita Threlfall, of asking her for the colour of her eyes and what jewellery she was wearing before saying “good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come” during her interview under caution in August 2010.

The inquiry heard that Bradshaw had been repeatedly told that there were problems with the Horizon accounting system by those he was investigating, but that he had continued with his work as nothing substantive had been “cascaded down from the top”.

He conceded that in hindsight he should not have signed off on the integrity of the system as he was “not technically minded”, and that it was “not right” that the wording of the statements submitted to courts under his name had been drafted by the external lawyers Cartwright King, with “tweaks” by the Post Office’s head of PR, Ronan Kelleher.

Bradshaw also defended a self-appraisal seen by the public inquiry in which he had emphasised that he had persuaded a barrister to take a suspect to trial despite their insistence that the Horizon system was at fault.

Bradshaw, who received bonuses for good performance, had written in his appraisal: “The offender pleaded guilty to false accounting but would not accept theft. I challenged the recommendations of the barrister and persuaded him that a trial would be necessary, as the reason given by the defendant, Horizon integrity, would have a wider impact on the business if a trial did not go ahead.”

He denied that this appraisal would have played any role in decisions about bonuses. He added, in defence of his language in the appraisal: “As you’re well aware, when you’re filling in one-to-ones, there’s always a flamboyant way of putting the words across.”

The inquiry into the Post Office scandal has been running for three years. It is expected to issue its final report next year.