Been following the Horizon thing in the UK
Here is a little bit more from Adam Crozier’s testimony today at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, via PA Media, which has pulled out these bits of transcription, where Crozier said he “doesn’t know” if the money paid by subpostmasters for accounting shortfalls was recorded as profit.
Sam Stein KC, who is acting at the inquiry on the behalf of a large group of subpostmaster and has been notably tenacious in his questioning of witnesses, said: “Subpostmasters and mistresses were being told to pay up. It’s your contractual duty, they were told, to pay up. And many of them did pay up for shortfalls that were certainly not their fault. They got that money from their own pockets.
“They got that money sometimes borrowing from friends. Some, you may recall, got the money from their kids’ piggy banks. Others got money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates, tipping them into financial chaos and bankruptcy. Help us please understand what happened to that money when it was paid in? Was it properly accounted for?”
Crozier, who headed Royal Mail when it owned the Post Office between 2003 and 2010 responded: “I assume it was through the financial team.”
When asked if it was accounted for as profit, he said: “I don’t know.”
Stein then asked: “It would be wholly wrong, would you agree, to account for a payment as shortfall as profit?”
Crozier responded: “I’m not an accounting expert. I wouldn’t know exactly how you account for different payments.”
And earlier:
Former chief executive of the Royal Mail Group Adam Crozier has said he did not have a “developed understanding” of the way in which Royal Mail carried out prosecutions.
Asked by Jason Beer KC “Is the truth of the matter that in your position you did not have a developed understanding of the extent to which Royal Mail prosecuted or the way in which things were or were not carried into effect?”
Crozier responded “I am not a lawyer. I would not claim it is my area of expertise.”
During Crozier’s time at the helm of the Royal Mail, its legal team, acting as a central team on behalf of the separate Post Office corporate entity, prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters using Horizon IT data.
he thinks he’s sooooo funny