Latest news with #prosecutions
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Cautious optimism over changes to human trafficking law
Anti human trafficking advocates are welcoming news that trafficking and people smuggling laws will soon be strengthened - with the hope it will result in more prosecutions. Since 2009, over 50 victims of trafficking have been identified in New Zealand, but only four prosecutions have been undertaken and just two of these prosecutions have led to a conviction. The Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed the changes would form part of the current reforms being made to the Crimes Act. Rebekah Armstrong is a member of the Human Trafficking Research Coalition and Head of Advocacy and Justice at World Vision New Zealand. Photo: - vimeo - Nancy Kelley
Times
7 days ago
- Times
Dozens of forgotten Post Office victims finally secure review
Subpostmasters prosecuted by the Department for Work and Pensions during the Horizon computer scandal are to have their cases reviewed by the government. Horizon was a faulty accounting system created by the Japanese software company Fujitsu that showed incorrect shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts. The Post Office blamed the subpostmasters and successfully prosecuted more than 700 of them between 1999 and 2015. Tireless campaigning by Sir Alan Bates and others meant they were exonerated en masse in January last year, although by then many had lost businesses, families, reputations and, in some cases, their lives. Separately, however, the DWP carried out its own prosecutions until 2012. Between 2001 and 2006, it secured the convictions of 61 Post Office employees for welfare-related fraud offences, mainly involving cashing stolen pensions dockets which many subpostmasters claim they did only to settle Horizon balances. They claim they are also the victims of the Post Office scandal — but they have not been exonerated. Now the DWP has said it will undertake an 'independent assurance review' of these cases. 'They put me in the back of a car' One of those who will have their case reviewed is Holly*, who began a career in a Post Office as a clerk in northeast England aged 20. Her name has been changed for this article. 'My role at the Post Office did not include balancing of the accounts: this was left to the postmaster. When the postmaster was on holiday, a temporary postmaster would come in,' she said. Shortly afterwards, in 2003 when she was six months pregnant, she was barred from entering the branch by someone who said they were from the 'Post Office investigation team'. 'They took my car keys and put me in the back of a car. I was firstly taken home so they could search the house. I was asked if there was anything in the house that they needed to be aware of,' Holly said. She was taken to a police station and held in a cell until questioning. 'I had no legal representation or union worker; I was on my own.' During a second interview, the issue of stolen benefit books was brought up. 'I remember being questioned about benefit books that had been cashed. This was the first time that these were mentioned,' she said. 'I was asked about transactions that were made and payments which were made for each transaction. This was when I began to understand what the last few months had all been about.' • After the Post Office scandal, I'm a cleaner for those who supported me Holly denies she had anything to do with the shortfall. She suspects she was unfairly blamed for pensions dockets that had been cashed. She said that, during the trial, 'my biggest memory was the prosecution telling the jury that I knew how to defraud the Post Office. The jury gave their verdict of guilty of theft.' She was told she would receive a suspended sentence due to having a young baby but ended up serving four months of a 15-month custodial sentence. She then had to wear an electronic tag for about four months and attend a probation centre every week. When she heard about the review, she said she was 'not getting my hopes up' that her conviction would be wiped. 'I'm not expecting anything,' she said. 'I don't want to build myself because I have been here so many times and been let down. My expectations are zero.' She added: 'Twenty years later years later, I have moved on with my life to the best I can but the impact it has had on me, and my family, has been something else.' Mr Allen v the Court of Appeal The DWP review will not include those who have already had their cases rejected by the Court of Appeal. One of those is Roger Allen, a subpostmaster from Norwich who spent six months in prison in 2004 after being convicted of a £37,000 fraud. The Horizon system was installed in his branch and his daughter, Keren Simpson, remembers her father 'coming home from work every week and he would always say that the balances didn't match up'. The DWP presented him with unsigned pension booklets that had been cashed in. Allen took his case to the Court of Appeal in 2021 but the judge said he was 'wholly unpersuaded … that this is, indeed, a Horizon case.' Roger Allen and his daughter Keren, below A document from 2003 showed the DWP, the police and the Post Office worked together to secure convictions. It has since emerged that tactics used by Post Office investigators in interviewing subpostmasters and retrieving evidence to secure convictions was unethical. Before Allen died in March last year, his daughter promised him she would fight to overturn his conviction. 'He'd given up,' said Simpson. 'He couldn't even talk about it, it was so difficult for him. I wanted him to know that I wouldn't give up. And I won't.' 'Dad did what he did because of Horizon' Alan Robinson, 83, from Halifax in West Yorkshire, was also convicted by the DWP. After Horizon was installed in his branch in May 2000 he started to notice shortfalls. He says he made good the losses by cashing spare pensions dockets and leaving the money in the till to balance the books. 'I robbed Peter to pay Paul,' Robinson said. He was accused of stealing £43,000 and given 12 months in prison when he was 62. Robinson failed to have the sentence overturned at the Court of Appeal. 'Dad did what he did because of the Horizon system,' his daughter Sarah Finnell said. She believes that those pursued by the DWP should have the same blanket exoneration as those in the Post Office prosecutions. 'They are both government organisations,' she said. 'They [the DWP and Post Office] worked together to secure convictions. All of those convictions, not just Post Office, should be deemed unsafe' Lord Sikka, the Labour peer who has been campaigning for a review of the DWP convictions, said: 'There are scandals within the Post Office scandal. The DWP has never come clean about its prosecution of postmasters. After nearly 30 years the slow progress of the DWP investigations, lack of urgency and transparency is very disappointing. No postmaster should be excluded from the review, as at the time of the original prosecutions and subsequent appeals, the flaws in the accounting systems were not publicly known. Those unfairly prosecuted and their families deserve justice'. A DWP spokesman said: 'We have committed to commissioning an independent assurance review where Post Office members of staff were prosecuted by the department for welfare-related fraud. 'These cases involved complex investigations and were backed by evidence including filmed surveillance, stolen benefit books and witness statements. To date, no documentation has been identified showing that Horizon data was essential to these prosecutions.' Despite her father's case not being part of the review, Simpson said she would continue the fight to clear his name. 'It feels like a bit of a hopeless mission at times,' she said. 'But I do still believe that the truth will prevail.'
Sky News
09-08-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Independent review to examine how govt department handled prosecutions of Post Office staff
The Department for Work and Pensions will launch an independent review into its handling of prosecutions against Post Office staff, Sky News has learned. About 100 prosecutions were carried out by the DWP between 2001 and 2006 during the Horizon IT scandal. The "independent assurance review", however, is yet to be commissioned and will not look at individual cases. It comes more than a year after Sky News discovered joint investigations between the Post Office and the DWP during the scandal - leading to suggestions some may be "tainted". Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of stealing by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015, due to the faulty Horizon IT system. 2:55 The DWP told Sky News they have "committed" to commissioning the review into prosecutions led by the department, where Post Office staff were investigated for "welfare-related fraud". They described cases as "complex investigations" which they said were "backed by evidence including filmed surveillance, stolen benefit books and witness statements". They also added that "to date no documentation has been identified showing that Horizon data was essential to these prosecutions". The review will look at a period of time spanning 20 years covered by the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024, from September 1996 to December 2018. The Horizon Act was effectively blanket exoneration legislation which automatically quashed Post Office convictions but did not include DWP or Capture-related prosecutions. The family of Roger Allen, who was convicted in 2004 of stealing pension payments by the DWP and sentenced to six months in prison, are "frustrated" the review won't look at his or other cases. Mr Allen died in March last year, still trying to clear his name. Keren Simpson, his daughter, describes the review as a "development" but a "fob off". "I think it's just getting us off their backs," she said, "I'll believe it when I see it because they're not taking any accountability. "They're not acknowledging anything. They're denying everything. "No one's saying, look, we really need to dig in and have a look at all these cases to see if there's the same pattern here." 1:29 Mr Allen pleaded guilty to spare his wife - after his lawyer told him in a letter that there had been "an indication from the Crown that they may discontinue the proceedings against Mrs Allen were you minded to plead guilty". Despite the Criminal Cases Review Commission deciding Mr Allen had grounds to appeal against his conviction - it was upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2021. The independent review will look at the "methodology and processes" used by the DWP, and the "thoroughness and adequacy" of efforts to obtain case documents. The DWP say that the review won't be commenting on individual cases or those that have been dismissed by the Court of Appeal. 11:28 Potential reviewers will also be approached with experience "outside of the civil service". They will be asked to produce a report with recommendations for any further actions within six months of starting their review. Lawyer Neil Hudgell, instructed by some of those prosecuted, described the review as "wholly inadequate", saying the DWP "should not be marking its own homework." "Any involvement in the process of appointing reviewers undermines all confidence in the independence of the process," he added. 2:48 He also criticised the DWP's statement as "strikingly defensive and closed minded". "It cannot be anything approaching rigorous or robust without a proper case by case review of all affected cases, including those dismissed by the Court of Appeal." He said that where hundreds of convictions were quashed "at the stroke of a pen" a proper and "targeted" review is "the least these poor victims are owed." "At the moment there is a widespread feeling among the group that they have been "left behind and that is both legally and morally wrong." A Freedom of Information request to the Department of Work and Pensions by Sky News has also found that most cases they prosecuted involved encashment of stolen benefit payment order books. In response to questions over how many prosecutions involved guilty pleas with no trial, the DWP said the information had been destroyed "in accordance with departmental records management practices" and in line with data protection.
Bloomberg
01-08-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
South Africa's Mbeki Blocked From Intervening in Apartheid Case
Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela to become the second president of democratic South Africa, has been denied permission to intervene in a court case between the state and victims or representatives of families impacted by crimes committed by apartheid security forces. Mbeki had asserted that because the applicants, in their case against the state, had accused him of interfering in their attempts to secure prosecutions he should be allowed to intervene. The applicants have argued that they have been denied justice as few perpetrators have been prosecuted despite decades having passed.
Telegraph
25-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Prosecutions of people smugglers tumble under Starmer
Only 150 people smugglers have been prosecuted in the past year despite Sir Keir Starmer's pledge to smash the gangs, figures obtained by the Conservatives show. Some 153 prosecutions were brought for the most serious people-smuggling offence of assisting illegal immigration, a crime that carries a maximum life sentence. Overall, 446 individuals were charged with an immigration offence between July 2024 and June 2025, only 1 per cent of the 43,309 who crossed in small boats during that time. The Tories claimed the prosecutions were the lowest on record apart from a year during the Covid-19 pandemic. They said prosecutions under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971 had fluctuated between a low of 274 in 2019-20 and a high of 471 in 2023. However, Labour said the Tories had miscounted. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: 'Keir Starmer boasted he would smash the gangs, but the gangs are laughing at him. ' They've never had it easier and crossings are up 50 per cent as a result. We're now heading towards being the illegal immigration capital of Europe. 'It's clear Starmer is incapable of stopping the boats and his backbenchers don't want him to. The country cannot go on like this - the situation in the Channel is a national security emergency. 'Those that arrive illegally from the safety of France must be swiftly deported so the message is clear: if you break into Britain, you will not get a life here.' A Labour spokesman said: 'Robert Jenrick can reinvent himself as many times as he likes, but he cannot rewrite history. With Labour in office, more people were charged with assisting unlawful immigration in our first year in government than in the entire time that Jenrick was in charge of the Immigration System. Indeed, we charged more people with that offence in our first three months than he managed in his last six. 'But much more important than Robert Jenrick's failures in the past are the ones he is making now, and we don't just mean screwing up this attempted attack story against Labour. 'If he was truly serious about prosecuting dangerous people smugglers, he would not have voted against our new law to criminalise people who endanger the lives of others in the Channel, and would instead be supporting us to take that action against those who cause women and children to suffocate and drown on overcrowded small boats,' they added.
