Under questioning from Jason Beer KC, the inquiry's lead counsel, about her knowledge of the faults in the Horizon IT system, which led to hundreds of people being wrongly pursued over missing funds, Vennells claimed she was "too trusting".
Text messages were also shared with the inquiry revealing that the former chief executive of Royal Mail Moya Greene messaged Vennells in January this year accusing her of being part of a cover-up of wrongful prosecutions. "I don't know what to say," wrote Greene, who headed Royal Mail between 2010 and 2018 and was Vennells' boss until the Post Office was split off in 2012. "I think you knew."
Vennells, 65, who led the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, responded: "No Moya, that isn't the case."
Between 1999 and 2015 hundreds of post office operators were wrongly prosecuted owing to faulty accounting software; thousands more were bankrupted or made to pay for cash alleged to have been missing.
In her evidence yesterday, during which she broke down on four occasions, Vennells claimed the Post Office's structure and decisions of some employees not to pass on information, including legal advice and damning independent reports, had left her unaware that people were being wrongly prosecuted or chased for missing funds.
This story is from the May 23, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the May 23, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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