Stall guys
Post Office scandal , Issue 1667 TWO years after Fujitsu European boss Paul Patterson appeared before MPs and admitted a "moral obligation" to help compensate sub-postmasters whom his company had lied to and, in some cases, sent to jail, he was back this month to explain why his company has done precisely nothing on redress.

The corporate speak-your-weight machine told Liam Byrne, Labour chair of the Commons business committee, that Fujitsu was waiting for Sir Wyn Williams' report on his statutory inquiry before coughing up.

"Why not make an interim payment then?" asked John Cooper, Tory MP for Dumfries & Galloway.

Patterson again hid behind Sir Wyn's work and the ongoing police investigation.

"To start talking about an interim payment would be inappropriate in that context." Alas, nobody asked why it would be inappropriate (it wouldn't).

Byrne asked why Fujitsu hadn't set anything aside in its accounts ("provisioned") for future payment. "Because we do not know the exact number for what it should be," said Patterson. As any beancounter knows, this isn't the test: an estimate based on available evidence is good enough once it's clear a payment will be due.

Patterson did nothing to dispel the sense that, despite its complicity in a scandal costing the taxpayer billions, Fujitsu (likely profits this year: £1.8bn) is playing a cagey game to limit the damage from one of the great corporate scandals of recent times.

Time at the Bar
Accountability lags in the legal field, too. Regulators at the Bar Standards Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) are already behind on action against the lawyers who falsely prosecuted and covered up.

"We had expected to bring cases to the Independent Decision-Making Body [which decides whether they go to a disciplinary tribunal] over the summer [2025]," the Bar Standards Board said in an update. "However, we are still negotiating permission from the document creators [Post Office and Fujitsu generally] to share these documents…"

Almost a year ago the SRA, which has 20 live Post Office-related investigations, said it was "hopeful that we can launch prosecution action in some cases in the summer of this year". Months after the clocks went back, still nothing has happened.

Bonus balls
Boardroom culprits also remain untouched. Director disqualifications haven't begun because of the police investigation (last Eye). Even financial penalties are off-limits.

Bonuses paid to Paula Vennells, Post Office boss from 2012-19, could and (according to its accounts from the time) should have been clawed back "in the event of misstatement of the accounts, error or gross misconduct", all of which have become clear. So how much of her £2.95m bonuses has been recouped beyond the £36,000 docked in 2019 because of the disastrous Alan Bates litigation? Nothing.

A Post Office spokesman told the Eye it "did not consider that it had the ability" to claw back based on "the specific facts and wording of the [scheme] rules".