​Conviction for Post Office fraud quashed

Patrica Fagan’s name was cleared after it emerged that flaws in the accounting system had not been properly disclosed.

Lawyers for the 72-year-old successfully argued that failures related to the Horizon IT scandal resulted in an abuse of process.

In 2017 Mrs Fagan, from Forkhill, Co Armagh, was convicted on two counts of false accounting and given a nine-month suspended prison sentence.

She had been prosecuted over an alleged financial shortfall of up to £6,500 discovered three years previously at a Post Office branch where she worked.

During interviews she emphatically denied ever taking any money and insisted there had been a fault with the Horizon payment system used by her employer.

Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted more than 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses across Britain and Northern Ireland because information from the flawed software made it look like money was missing from their sites.

It has been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.

Scores of branch managers in Britain wrongly found guilty of offences linked to the same defective IT have already had their names cleared.

Last year the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) invited Mrs Fagan to appeal her conviction after carrying out a review of the case.

In court today her barrister, Ronan Lavery KC, argued there had been failure to disclose the full extent of flaws in the Horizon system at trial.

He submitted there had been an abuse of process which rendered the conviction unsafe.

Counsel for the PPS, Philip Henry, said it was not opposing the challenge or seeking a retrial.

Based on those developments, Lord Justice Treacy confirmed: “We allow the appeal and quash the conviction.”

Outside court Mrs Fagan’s solicitor, Anne-Marie Featherstone of Rafferty & Co, said: “This has had a traumatic impact on my client and her family.

“Mrs Fagan is absolutely delighted with the outcome which means her name has finally been cleared.

“She is just deeply saddened that her late husband is not alive to see this day.”