Ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells has been accused of crying ‘crocodile tears’ by a union as she struggled to answer questions during her testimony to the Horizon IT scandal inquiry.
In the first of three days of testimony, Ms Vennells insisted she did not know until 2012 that the Post Office conducted its own private criminal investigations, despite joining the organisation in 2007.
She broke down in tears when asked about her response to the death of former subpostmaster Martin Griffiths, who died following an attempted suicide in 2013 and there were long pauses before she answered some questions put to her.
The CWU union, that represents Post Office workers posted a video on X, adding: “Crocodile tears Paula Vennells must be held to account.”
More than 700 subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as a result of Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system – which made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
