Wrongly accused Post Office workers call for former chief executive to be stripped of her fortune 

Victims of the Post Office’s IT scandal which saw postmasters wrongly jailed have said their money had ended up in ‘pockets of bigwigs’ like the former chief executive.

Campaigners said that Horizon’s glitches in turn ended up in bigger bonuses for top bosses, including Paula Vennells, 62, who ran the Post Office between 2012 and 2019.

She walked away with around £5 million in pay and bonuses during her seven years at the helm and now lives in a £2 million farmhouse.

Campaigners said that Horizon’s glitches in turn ended up in bigger bonuses for top bosses, including Paula Vennells (pictured), 62, who ran the Post Office between 2012 and 2019

As the Post Office’s chief executive, she was awarded with hefty bonuses on top of her £255,000 base salary. 

Close to 700 victims were incorrectly accused of crimes such as fraud and theft between 2000 and 2015 when glitches in the computer system, called Horizon, were to blame. 

In the 12 months before Ms Vennells left, she earned £750,000, including a £388,000 performance-related bonus, plus £63,800 cash in lieu of pension. 

But instead of retiring to her sprawling Grade II-listed farmhouse, she then took up a portfolio of high-status, lucrative roles.

Yesterday campaign group Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance said IT errors resulted in bonuses for the big bosses, The Sun reported.

Chris Trousdale, who ran a branch in Lealholm, North Yorkshire, told the publication: ‘Money taken from sub-postmasters went into a massive suspense account at the Post Office. We’re talking about millions.

‘That money was then used to boost the Post Office’s profits, making its performance seem better.

Ms Vennells walked away with around £5 million in pay and bonuses during her seven years at the helm and now lives in a £2million farmhouse

‘So the execs’ bonuses, their pensions and their pay were based on figures inflated by victims’ money.

‘Our money ended up directly in the pockets of bigwigs like Paula Vennells.’

A public inquiry is currently underway.

The independent body in charge of investigating miscarriages of justice earlier this week took the lead in urging postmasters to overturn their wrongful convictions. 

But two years after the full extent of the scandal was revealed, 576 are yet to come forward because of their ‘inherent mistrust’ of the Post Office.

Just 104 postmasters have had their convictions overturned or begun the process to quash them.

Ms Vennells has blamed IT experts for covering up the extent of faults with the Horizon system.

She told a committee of MPs: ‘The message that the board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that while, like any IT system, Horizon was not perfect and had a limited lifespan, it was fundamentally sound.’

Her comments came after a High Court judge found that Fujitsu’s experts knew about the IT problems in 1999 – 15 years before the prosecutions against postmasters were halted.