Fujitsu and Britain’s Post Office always knew about software errors that led to the wrongful conviction of hundreds of people for theft and false accounting, the company’s European head told a public inquiry.
"Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs and errors and defects which were very well known to all parties,” Fujitsu’s Paul Patterson said Friday. Glitches in the Japanese company’s Horizon software resulted in the Post Office prosecuting large numbers of its branch managers between 1999 and 2015, in one of the biggest injustices in modern British history.
Patterson was appearing in front of the inquiry led by former High Court judge Wyn Williams. He added that references to bugs were not included in past witness statements made by Fujitsu staff. "I’ve seen some evidence of editing of witness statements by others,” he said, without specifying who had edited the statements.