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Post Office scandal: The investigator who led the destruction of innocent sub-postmasters


Stephen Bradshaw was an investigator in the Post Office scandal who relentlessly pursued sub-postmasters desperate to get them to repay money they had never taken or to see them convicted in court

Stephen Bradshaw, one the investigators who pursued the sub-postmasters caught in the scandal(PA)

The investigator who went after innocent sub-postmasters accusing them of fraud appeared during the Post Office scandal inquiry this week.

And it’s turned people’s attention to the methods, manner and attitude of Stephen Bradshaw, one the investigators who pursued the sub-postmasters caught in the scandal. Phase 4 of the inquiry into the Post Office scandal, when hundreds of sub-postmasters across the UK were wrongly prosecuted or convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting, continued last week after a break for Christmas.




So who is Stephen Bradshaw and what did he do? Bradshaw was an investigator in the Post Office scandal who relentlessly pursued sub-postmasters desperate to get them to repay money they had never taken or to see them convicted in court. He started working for the Post Office in 1978 and was involved in the criminal investigation of nine sub-postmasters in total, joining the unit dealing with that in the year 2000.

His aggressive pursuit of people who were innocent is seen as playing a significant role in the scandal. Mr Bradshaw said he wasn’t “technically-minded” so “wouldn’t know if there was a problem” with the Horizon software. He added that a statement signed by him in 2012 declaring the Post Office’s “absolute confidence” in Horizon was written by lawyers from the firm Cartwright King.

But questions still remain around the power Mr Bradshaw wielded during this scandal when he wasn’t a police officer or a lawyer. So much so that he got the nickname “mafia gangster”. But Mr Bradshaw had denied that he and his colleagues “behaved like Mafia gangsters” during the investigations.

Bradshaw was an investigator in the Post Office scandal who relentlessly pursued sub-postmasters(PA)

During her interview under caution in August 2010, Rita Threlfall, a Merseyside sub-postmistress who was a victim in the scandal, said Mr Bradshaw asked for her eye colour and what jewellery she was wearing when the scandal was unfolding and then said: “Good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come”.

And Jacqueline McDonald said she was “bullied” by the investigator during an investigation into her £50,000 shortfall. Responding to Ms McDonald’s claims in his statement, Mr Bradshaw said: “I refute the allegation that I am a liar.” He argued that his investigation was conducted in a “professional” way.

Mr Bradshaw also investigated Lorraine Williams, who was a sub-postmistress at a Post Office branch in Bangor, Wales and was accused of stealing money. She told WalesOnline: “Stephen Bradshaw would start with these leading questions. He would ask me questions like: ‘where has the money gone?’. I explained to them that I didn’t know, but I had done nothing wrong. I told them how much money I had made, and that I had checked the money at all times.”



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