Gareth Jenkins, who is understood to have been instrumental in developing the software as a senior computer engineer at Fujitsu, is under police investigation over his role in
the Post Office scandal.
His testimony given in court cases that the Fujitsu IT system was working correctly was central to convictions and repeatedly used by Post Office lawyers.
Tracked down by The Telegraph to his home in Berkshire, Mr Jenkins, 69, said, when asked if he was sorry for what had happened: “I don’t want to talk. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Mr Jenkins has twice sought a guarantee that any testimony he gives to the inquiry cannot be used against him in any possible prosecution and his testimony has also been delayed twice.
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Mr Jenkins had been due to give evidence to the public inquiry twice. But in each occasion it was postponed including as recently as November 2023, when the Post Office disclosed 3,045 documents on the evening before he was due to give evidence. Sources have speculated that the release of the documents was timed to prevent Mr Jenkins giving evidence.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed last week it was investigating “
matters concerning Fujitsu Horizon and the Post Office… into potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice”.
The Met also announced it was investigating “potential fraud offences” as a result of the wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters. That includes an allegation the Post Office boosted its profits by recovering money from sub-postmasters
falsely dragged through the criminal or civil courts.
The Telegraph understands that Mr Jenkins, who was chief Horizon architect at Fujitsu, told investigators as early as 2012 that the IT system designed for the Post Office could be accessed remotely by Fujitsu at its headquarters in Bracknell, Berks. But it would take until 2019 for the Post Office to admit that sub-postmasters’ computer systems could be accessed remotely, blowing a hole in the key prosecution argument that the system could not be tampered with and was failsafe.
Ian Henderson, a director of Second Sight, a forensic accountancy firm that first highlighted the unsafe convictions, told the BBC on Tuesday: “We were able to identify that there were bugs and defects in the Horizon system. This was disclosed to the Post Office by Fujitsu itself.
“I visited Fujitsu in September 2012 and met with the senior technical engineer and had a very detailed meeting looking at how they operated, what the problems were. It was at that meeting that Fujitsu disclosed to me that they routinely used remote access to branch terminals for troubleshooting purposes.”
The Telegraph has been told the senior engineer who briefed the Second Sight team was Mr Jenkins. Prosecutions were not halted until 2015.
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