Former sub-postmaster Lee Castleton turns into first particular person to sue Put up Workplace and Fujitsu after uncovering ‘fraud’

A sub-postmaster made well-known for being portrayed within the ITV Put up Workplace drama is taking the state-owned physique and Fujitsu to court docket.

Lee Castleton has turn into the primary particular person former sub-postmaster to launch Excessive Court docket motion towards the Put up Workplace and the maker of the Horizon defective laptop software program.

It was the Horizon accounting software program created by Fujitsu that wrongly generated monetary shortfalls, making it seem that Mr Castleton owed the Put up Workplace cash.

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He’s bringing the problem towards the organisations after it emerged Fujitsu withheld its error log throughout the prosecution.

Had it been included it could have been clear Horizon contained bugs, errors and defects.

This failure to reveal means the judgment towards him was obtained by fraud, he’ll argue.

“We additionally imagine the judgement was obtained by fraud in that the Put up Workplace and Fujitsu knew completely effectively that the Horizon system wasn’t working correctly,” his solicitor Simon Goldberg stated.

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The Put up Workplace and Fujitsu maintained there have been no errors with Horizon till 2019.

Whereas prosecutions towards sub-postmasters have been overturned en masse via one-off laws, the civil judgment towards Mr Castleton was not captured by the legislation and nonetheless stands.

Uncovered fraud

The revelation that data was withheld from Mr Castleton throughout his trial got here out throughout the public inquiry into the Put up Workplace Horizon scandal.

The inquiry was established to create a transparent account of the implementation and failure of the Fujitsu-created software program.

As a part of the scandal, greater than 700 sub-postmasters have been prosecuted for theft and false accounting.

Many extra, like Mr Castleton, have been declared bankrupt as they struggled to plug the imagined shortfalls.

The judgment additionally destroyed his enterprise, livelihood, and status in his group.

It had a devastating long-term influence on his and his household’s well being.

He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) within the New 12 months’s honours checklist.

The Put up Workplace and Fujitsu have been contacted for remark.