POL00247840
POL00247840
To: Michelle
Subject: Suspense Accounts - Private & Confidential - Subject to Legal Privilege
All,
As you may know, a group of current and former postmasters have brought a claim against Post Office and the gist of
the claim is that Horizon is defective and the accounting processes associated with it are inadequate.
One of the allegations made by the claimants is that:-
e The suspense accounts operated by Post Office are used to hold unattributed surpluses including those
generated from branch accounts.
e After a period of time, such unattributed surpluses were credited to Post Office's profits.
e Post Office thereby stood to benefit and/or did benefit from apparent shortfalls wrongly attributed to the
Claimants which did not represent real losses to Post Office.
For the avoidance of doubt, we do not think that anyone has been doing anything inappropriate or improper. Getting
this review done independently across a very complex area of the business is simply us making sure that we can prove
that’s the case. No one therefore needs to feel defensive and you should simply be open and available.
Deloitte have been engaged to assist Post Office's solicitors, Bond Dickinson, to prepare Post Office's defence to this
allegation. Deloitte have carried out an initial piece of work which has identified several different "suspense"
accounts and certain controls that are in place to ensure that they are used properly, but further work is required in
order to complete Post Office defence. It is likely that Deloitte will need input from you as part of this process.
All of the communications between Post Office and/or Deloitte and/or Bond Dickinson in relation to this work will
attract legal privilege, which means that Post Office will not be obliged to provide copies of the communications to
the claimants as part of the group litigation. However, legal privilege can be lost. In order to ensure that this does
not happen, please adhere to the following practices:-
e = The subject line of all emails in relation to this matter should always contain "Private & Confidential - Subject
to Legal Privilege".
e Only those copied to this email should be included in further emails.
e If input is needed from someone that is not on the circulation list, please speak first to Jonny Gribben at Bond
POL00247840
POL00247840
Dickinson
Kind Regards
Al
. Alisdair Cameron
Chief Financial & Operating Officer
20 Finsbury Street,
London EC2Y 94Q