Post Office used threat of jail to persuade accused to keep quiet about Horizon failings

Stephen Bradshaw arriving at the Horizon scandal inquiry. He has worked at the Post Office since 1978 and is still employed there today Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

An investigator accused of acting like a “mafia gangster” when securing false convictions against post office operators has admitted softer charges were offered in exchange for silence over the culpability of the Horizon IT system.

In several instances, the accused were told they could avoid a jail sentence if they kept quiet about the accounting system’s faults, as part of an aggressive strategy by the Post Office to protect their cases as they pursued them in the courts.