- By Andy Verity
- BBC Economics correspondent
26 January 2024, 00:01 GMT
Updated 23 minutes ago
Post Office bosses secretly decided in April 2014 to sack forensic accountants who had found bugs in their IT system, documents obtained by the BBC show.
They also reveal the government had knowledge of the decision, taken by a Post Office board sub-committee, codenamed “Project Sparrow”.
Former sub-postmaster Alan Bates said it was further proof of a “total cover-up”.
The Post Office said it would be inappropriate to comment.
The independent forensic accountants Second Sight played a key role in exposing the scandal, finding flaws in the Horizon computer system which generated false evidence of cash shortfalls at sub-post offices, leading to wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters.
Post Office bosses kept insisting their systems were robust.
But they made a concession following pressure from MPs,…