Japanese firm has a reckoning to face Gareth Corfield Fri 23 Apr 2021 // 14:15 UTC Share Copy Post Office employees were wrongly prosecuted by the company as a direct result of it covering up software bugs in its Horizon IT system, the Court of Appeal has said as it quashed 39 convictions this morning. Those 39 convictions were obtained by the Post Office's in-house lawyers who ignored their own barristers' advice that the institution's behaviour was trampling over established prosecutorial codes intended to promote fairness and honesty. Lord Justice Holroyde said that the one-time state monopoly had, by representing Horizon as reliable, "effectively sought to reverse the burden of proof," leading to criminal defendants having to prove their innocence instead of the Post Office showing they were guilty. Its lawyers compounded this by withholding evidence from courts and defence lawyers alike – evidence which clearly showed the Post Office and Fujitsu knew Horizon wasn't generating accurate accounting records.