Post Office scandal: Woman's conviction for false accounting quashed

Patricia Fagan denied ever taking any more from her Post Office branch

A 77-year-old woman's conviction for falsifying accounts at her Post Office branch is to be quashed.

Patricia Fagan, from Forkhill, County Armagh, was convicted on two counts of false accounting and given a nine-month suspended prison sentence in 2017.

She was prosecuted over an alleged financial shortfall of up to £6,500.

Lawyers for Mrs Fagan successfully argued that failures related to the Horizon IT scandal resulted in an abuse of process.

Her name was cleared after it emerged that flaws in the accounting system had not been properly disclosed.

The financial shortfall was discovered in 2014 at the Post Office branch where she worked.

During interviews, Mrs Fagan denied ever taking any money, insisting there had been a fault with the Horizon payment system used by her employer.

Horizon was introduced into the Post Office network from 1999. The system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was used for tasks such as transactions, accounting and stocktaking.

Between 2000 and 2014, a flaw in the computer system made it look like money was missing from Post Office branches.

It led to suspensions, termination of contracts, wrongful prosecutions and convictions.

Error logs of the Horizon system show that computer bugs could cause losses

The Horizon IT scandal saw more than 700 people wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.

It has been described as the most "widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history".

• What is the Post Office Horizon saga all about?

Last year the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) invited Mrs Fagan to appeal her conviction after carrying out a review of her case.

Mrs Fagan's barrister, Ronan Lavery KC, told the Court of Appeal there had been a failure to disclose the full extent of Horizon flaws during her trial.

He argued there had been an abuse of process, rendering her conviction unsafe.

Counsel for the PPS, Philip Henry, said it was not opposing the challenge or seeking a retrial.

Based on those developments, Lord Justice Treacy confirmed: "We allow the appeal and quash the conviction."

Outside court, Mrs Fagan's solicitor Anne-Marie Featherstone said the initial ruling had a "traumatic impact" on her client.

"Mrs Fagan is absolutely delighted with the outcome which means her name has finally been cleared," she said.

"She is just deeply saddened that her late husband is not alive to see this day."