Post Office tried to ‘hush up’ case of worker who killed himself, inquiry hears | Post Office Horizon scandal

The Post Office sought to “hush up” the case of Martin Griffiths, a post office operator who took his own life, by “drip feeding” compensation payments to his widow and lining up a media lawyer to protect its reputation, a public inquiry has heard.

Angela van den Bogerd, a former business improvement director at the state-owned body, was being questioned at the Horizon IT public inquiry on Friday about the case of Griffiths, who died in 2013 after financial shortfalls were found at his Post Office branch in Cheshire.

The inquiry heard that Griffiths and his mother had both written to the Post Office earlier in 2013 about the “severe pressure” and “worry” that he was experiencing due to the £39,000 shortfall, which he blamed on software errors.

Griffiths’ parents had used their life savings to repay back thousands of pounds of his purported shortfalls, the inquiry heard. The Post Office was also demanding Griffiths pay back £7,500 after an armed robbery at his branch for which he had been partly blamed because he had failed to follow certain security procedures, the inquiry heard.

Griffiths attempted suicide on 23 September 2013 and died in hospital weeks later.

The Post Office eventually offered his widow, Gina Griffiths, £140,000 in a settlement agreement and insisted she sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). An internal document said “staged payments” had been agreed “which we asked for as an incentive for Mrs Griffiths maintaining confidentiality”.

Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Van den Bogerd whether the Post Office was using the “drip feeding of money” to Griffiths’ widow “as a means of ensuring she keeps it [his case] hushed up”.

“‘You don’t get any more money unless you keep quiet.’ That’s what this is, isn’t it?,” Beer put to her. He asked: “Did you see anything unsavoury in using money as a way of ensuring Mr Griffiths’ case was hushed up?”

Van den Bogerd replied: “No, that did not even enter my head … My concern at the time was facilitating that payment to Gina.”

The inquiry was shown an email sent to the Post Office by Alan Bates, the former post operator and campaigner who inspired the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

Bates wrote to the Post Office executives including Van den Bogerd on the same day he heard that Griffiths had tried to kill himself, saying Griffiths was a “prime example of the thuggery being exerted on defenceless subpostmasters … by arrogant and uncontrolled Post Office personnel”.

The inquiry heard that after receiving Bates’ email, Mark Davies, a former Post Office communications executive, replied to Van den Bogerd and other executives: “Please can we line up a specialist media lawyer in case we need urgent advice this evening.”

Beer told Van den Bogerd: “The immediate reaction was not ‘is Martin Griffiths all right?’ … or ‘what can we, the Post Office, do to help this man’s family?’.”

“Not at this point,” Van den Bogerd said.

Beer continued: “No, the first thing was let’s get a media lawyer … Is that what it was like working in the Post Office at the time? It was all about brand reputation, brand image.”

Edward Henry KC, representing a number of victims of the scandal, told Van den Bogerd that she must be “dishonest or grossly incompetent” to have not realised the significance of internal emails sent to her from 2010 to 2014 that said the IT system could be remotely accessed by Fujitsu, the Japanese IT company that developed it.

She confirmed to the inquiry that she had received a bonus in 2019 – the same year that a high court judge criticised her for having “a disregard for factual accuracy”.

Sam Stein KC, barrister for a number of post office operatives, told her: “So despite the finding in the high court that basically you lied … you got your bonus?” “Yes.” she replied.

The Post Office, which is owned by the UK government, pursued hundreds of operators for more than a decade, alleging financial shortfalls in their branch accounts and prosecuting them. It has since emerged that these discrepancies were caused by IT bugs within the Horizon system.

The inquiry continues.