"Japan tech firm Fujitsu in firing line over U.K. Post Office scandal," 11 January 2024

A Japanese technology giant is in the crosshairs of British lawmakers for building the faulty accounting software that led to what has been called the country's biggest-ever miscarriage of justice.

Fujitsu created the Horizon IT system that resulted in some 700 local post office managers being wrongly convicted for theft and false accounting between 1999 and 2005.

The U.K. government, which plans to exonerate all victims, has warned the company will be "held to account" if a public inquiry finds it guilty of wrongdoing...

The United Kingdom's state-owned Post Office began installing Horizon IT in the late 1990s but flaws in its programming showed that money had gone missing from the subpostmasters' branch accounts when it had not.

Postal service executives, refusing to acknowledge problems with the software, forced workers to repay the shortfalls.

The false accusations resulted in some managers being jailed, going bankrupt, losing their homes and their health.

Four people took their own lives and dozens of those since exonerated died without seeing their names cleared...

An independent public inquiry established in 2021 has yet to conclude who at the Post Office, or Fujitsu, knew what and when.

Government ministers have suggested that Fujitsu should cover some of the payouts if it is found culpable...