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Internal memo
To
cc
Date
From
Subject POST OFFICE Ltd v PAG!
Deborah Helszajn
Senior Lawyer
8" November 2004
Manish Patel
Internal Crime Operations Manager
PAPER NOS: SIMS/6299
Debbie
Further to the letter received from JMW dated 28" October 2004, I have
addressed each of the points below:-
1.
Copies of the cheques used by: GRO ifor the purchase of the
euros form exhibit SB/01, copies of this exhibit have already been supplied
to your office and as I understand JMW did not want copies of this exhibit
previously. I do have slightly better copies of the microfilm copies and can
make these available for inspection at a mutually suitable time and venue.
All of the Forde Moneychanger till roll printouts for the relevant period form
part of exhibit NJW/1 and NJW/2 (police exhibits). Currently only the
relevant portion of the till rolls has been copied and produced as further
exhibits by myself, however having discussed this issue with you last week,
I can confirm that arrangements have now been made to copy all of the till
rolls relevant to the period of the charge in their entirety. This work will
commence on Monday 8" November 2004 and should be completed within
two weeks.
It has been confirmed previously due to a similar request from Frisby & Co
Solicitors that Rugeley Post Office did not register any corporate customers;
I trust a copy of the list of registered corporate customers supplied
previously can be made available to JMW Solicitors.
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The next part of point 3 cannot be answered. I would not be aware of any
unregistered Corporate customers as if they were unregistered there would
be no record of them on the Registered Corporate customer list, the only
person who could confirm if there were any customers treated as
unregistered corporate customers would be Mr Carl Page.
I have spoken to Eddie Jarman, Overseas Travel Product Manager with
regards to the annual rebate scheme provided to corporate customers. I
have been informed that this scheme was terminated some 6-8 years ago
and is no longer available, nor was it available during the period of the
Rugeley enquiry. Mr Jarman was able to say that when the scheme was in
operation each customer would have their contract drawn up to reflect the
rebate scheme and it would only be available to the customer if they bought
a certain amount of currency per year, this would then allow them to claim
back a rebate based on a percentage of the total yearly purchase. Each
customer's percentage would be agreed with the customer at the time of the
contract negotiation and would be based on the volume being purchased
therefore each customer who elected to join the scheme may well have
different percentage values written into their contract. As far as Mr Jarman
can remember, he believes very few customers took up the rebate scheme
and as already mentioned it was not available during the period Mr
Whitehouse has been using Rugeley Post Office for his currency
transactions.
COPIES
1. Exhibit No. 24 is exhibit NJW/1 which consists of two bags of Forde
Moneychanger till rolls recovered during the search of Rugeley Post Office.
These till rolls consist of a variety of dates including periods in 2001, which
do not form part of the evidence in relation to the charge. The relevant till
rolls covering the period from 9" March 2002 to 13" January 2003 are now
in the process of being copied in their entirety.
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2. Exhibit No. 25 is exhibit NJW/2 which consists of further Forde
Moneychanger till rolls recovered during the search of Rugeley Post Office.
As indicated above the relevant till rolls are now in the process of being
copied.
3. I trust you have a copy of page 315 of Mr Pages interview with the Police, if
not please let me know and I will forward another copy.
PART COPIED
Exhibit 17 (FEARN 0002), Customs & Excise exhibit taken from the glove
compartment of a Silver BMW }. Customs & Excise retained copies of
the Post Office Forde Moneychanger receipts and the completed stub portion of
the HSBC chequebook. The Police ultimately returned the originals to Mr
i The rest of the exhibit would have been the blank portion of the
chequebook, which has not been copies or retained.
Exhibit 20, (TRM 3) Customs & Excise exhibit recovered from GRO
home address, The exhibit is described as HSBC chequebook, Cheques 100301
4100314, 3 x pink Thomas Cook payment receipts and 3 x blue Thomas cook
payment receipts. Again original exhibits have since been handed back to Mr
and the only copies retained by the Police relate to the Thomas Cook
payment receipts. The HSBC chequebook was not retained nor copies taken.
Exhibit 26, (NJVW/4), consists of several portions of Forde Moneychanger till roll
receipts, the four (4) portions already copied refer to Euros and the seven (7) other
portions refer to U. S Dollars and therefore have not been copied.
Exhibit 29, (NJW/8) miscellaneous documents recovered during the Police search
of Rugeley Post Office. The only items not copied from this exhibit relate to a
couple of bits of paperwork for the sale of travellers cheques which do not form
part of this enquiry, hence have not been copied.
Exhibit 44, (IMAP/01) consists of four (4) exercise books used by the staff at
Rugeley Post Office to record details of cheques, the two (2) exercise books
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covering the charge period have been copied, the remaining two (2) exercise
books cover periods in 2000 and 2001 and hence have not been copied.
Exhibit 137, (PB/88) consists of paperwork from Thomas Cook Retail in relation to
the transactions they conducted with: ‘over the relevant period. The
part copied refers to the fact that the ssette produced as part of the
same exhibit by Pippa Barker has not been copied, everything else forming that
exhibit has been copied.
The above also applies to Exhibit 136 (which JMW haven't asked about), exhibit
146 (PB/97), exhibit 147 (PB/98), exhibit 148 (PB/99), exhibit 149 (PB/100), exhibit
150 (PB/101), exhibit 151 (PB/102), exhibit 152 (PB/103), exhibit 153 (PB/104),
exhibit 154 (PB/105), exhibit 155 (PB/106), exhibit 156 (PB/107), exhibit 157
(PB/108), exhibit 158 (PB/109), exhibit 159 (PB/110), exhibit 160 (PB/111), exhibit
161 (PB/112), exhibit 162 (PB/113) and exhibit 163 (PB/114).
All of the videotapes capture the footage ofI GRO conducting his
transactions at various Thomas Cook Retail outlets. They have not been viewed
by me and currently are not relied vu erwork in relation to these
transfers forms the exhibit, which I. as I understand does not
dispute. Furthermore bank statements for “"} accounts show details
of the credits being paid into his accoun mas Cook Retail further
demonstrating that he did carry out the transaction.
I trust the above meets with your satisfaction and should you require anything
__{ Jfurther please do not hesitate to contact me on the number shown below.
GRO
GRO
t Office Ltd. Security
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Internal memo
To
cc
Date
From
Subject POST OFFICE Ltd v PAGE
Deborah Helszajn
Senior Lawyer
9" November 2004
Manish Patel
Internal Crime Operations Manager
PAPER NOS: SIMS/6299
Debbie
Further to the letter received from JMW dated 5" November 2004, I have
addressed each of the points below:-
1.
As per Hugh Stacey's statement, when the Post Office first commenced
offering currency at it's Post Offices in 1993, the currency was supplied by
First rate Currency Services (FRCS), a subsidiary of the Bank of Ireland. In
March 2002 the subsidiary company name changed to First Rate Travel
Services (FRTS) who now supply currency to the Post Office. I can confirm
that no other company supplies the Post Office with currency.
No other companies used.
All cheques accepted at Rugeley Post Office during the period in question
will in normal course have been microfilmed; the microfilm is currently being
recovered from the archived stores. All cheques despatched from the Post
Office would have been accompanied with a Batch Control Voucher (BCV),
which would have provided a summary of the total number of cheques and
total value despatched. These cheques would consist of all transactions
conducted in the Post Office over the course of that day and could be
anywhere from 5 cheques to 100 cheques per day. There would be nothing
on the front of the cheque to differentiate it from a cheque taken for the
Bureau product or one taken to pay the phone bill. The only way to extract
those cheques taken for the Bureau product is to examine the reverse of
the cheque and see what the clerk performing the transaction has written
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on the back. For a Bureau product the clerk should write Bureau or BC on
the back. I anticipate that this exercise will take some time as it will require
someone to actually sit and examine every single cheque taken over a 9
month period and print of those which have Bureau written on the back. I
will be in Chesterfield on Thursday 41" 2004 and will gauge the level of
work this will require but at a guess I would suggest that it would take at
least 2 weeks (from w/c 15.11.04). However I do not think there will be too
many cheques actually taken for the Bureau product so in terms of amount
of paper, there should not be too much.
I have spoken to Customs & Excise today who confirmed that it is their
standard procedure to place large cash seizures into high interest bearing
accounts, unless there is a need evidentially to retain the actual notes
themselves, which was not the case with Rugeley.
The Euros were seized on the 13" January 2003 and were banked within a
couple of days and would have received the exchange rate provided by the
bank on the day (which Customs don’t know). The money would have then
lost it's identity as euros and was an amount of sterling held in the high
interest bearing account.
The money including interest accrued was then electronically transferred to
the Post Office account on 15" ‘otal amount received by the
Post Office was £385,364.61. had paid £360,493.83 for
584,000 euros using cheques, which were not cashed (were stopped by
later anyway). Therefore the amount of interest was
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