Post Office scandal: Police send 80 detectives to solve the crime | Post Office Horizon scandal

The Guardian has learned that police are planning to deploy 80 detectives to investigate the Post Office scandal, but victims will have to wait a long time before they find out whether charges will be brought.

The investigation concerns possible crimes of perjury and perversion of justice by senior postal officials and the technology company Fujitsu.

Police have already begun discussions with prosecutors about the investigation and possible criminal charges, stemming from the possibility that postal workers were wrongly accused of theft when bosses allegedly knew their computer accounting system might be flawed.

The police operation will be nationwide and split into four regional centres. The staffing and resources will be equivalent to those of a major murder or terrorism investigation. The police have asked the Government for a special grant of at least £6.75 million to fund the operation.

But the victims have to wait a long time before they find out whether their accusers – who they falsely claim – will themselves be brought to justice.

The police will not seek to bring charges or submit evidence files to the Crown Prosecution Service until the public inquiry into the postal scandal is completed, which is expected to take place in autumn 2025.

The CPS is not expected to bring charges until 2026, and the wait for criminal trials could be even longer. Investigators and civilian analysts have yet to be hired, and the full national police investigation will be months away from starting.

The initial investigation has identified at least 20 possible suspects, but more could be added as the investigation gets into full swing. One source said there could be dozens of possible suspects.

Once the team is up and running, it will consider whether fraud should be added to the list of crimes to be investigated. The CPS’s Special Cases Unit advises the police on postal investigations and handles complex cases.

The Metropolitan Police has been leading the investigation since 2020, but the scale of the possible crimes and the fact that so many cases are occurring outside Greater London have led to plans to set up a nationwide operation.

Stephen Clayman, head of the Metropolitan Police, said: “A team of investigators have been carefully reviewing millions of documents, both manually and using specialist software, in parallel with the public inquiry.

“This is very time consuming and we cannot take shortcuts and risk missing evidence.

“Given the significant scale of the investigation, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has agreed that the next phase of the investigation will be a national policing operation, coordinated by the Met, with the pursuit of justice at its core.”

Plans for the nationwide inquiry are expected to be submitted to the police chief’s decision-making body, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, for approval.

The new nationwide phase of the police investigation will be led by a senior officer, most likely Deputy Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 post office operators were prosecuted after errors in the Horizon software system falsely reported that money was missing from their branches.

Some were imprisoned, persecuted for money, financially ruined and, in some cases, so broken by the pressure and injustice that they took their own lives. The Post continued to fight against those who had been wronged until 2019.

A new law has exonerated some of those convicted. They are entitled to a final compensation of £600,000. Alternatively, they can accept an interim payment and thus keep their legal options open.

The public inquiry will examine the following: “Royal Mail Group Limited/Post Office Limited failed to disclose the existence of problems with Horizon and/or concerns about its reliability when initiating criminal proceedings against individuals alleged to be responsible for those deficiencies.”

It is also being investigated: “At what level within the organizations mentioned and the government were these known?”

The police have been closely monitoring the oral and written evidence at the public inquiry.