A former post office boss says he wishes “in the strongest possible terms” to offer a personal apology to branch managers affected by the Horizon IT scandal.

Alan Cook was the organization’s managing director between 2006 and 2010, during which time around 200 prosecutions were brought against deputy postmasters.

He said he had “no idea” that the post office had filed a criminal complaint.

Bugs and errors in Horizon’s accounting system resulted in money appearing to be missing from their branches and hundreds of people being wrongly convicted of theft.

Victims faced prison and financial losses, others were ostracized from their communities, and some took their own lives.

attracted new attention scandal The government was prompted to take action after ITV aired the TV series Mr Bates vs. the Post Office.

Mr Cook told the Post Office Inquiry on Friday: “I wonder…before we get started, if I can say that I want to express my strongest personal apologies to all the deputy postmasters, their families and those who have been affected. Sympathy.” This.

“Obviously, I’ll have a chance to elaborate on that as we get into the conversation, but I feel like it’s an important thing to say upfront.”

He also told the inquest: “I was not aware that the Post Office was the prosecuting authority.

“I knew there were court cases but didn’t realize that about two-thirds of the cases were prosecuted by the Post Office rather than by the DPP (Attorney General) or the police.”

During his time as a non-executive director of the Post Office, Mr Cook said he “regretted” he had failed to correctly understand minutes of a meeting which said the organization had “principles for prosecution”.

He said: “At times there was a high-pitched and powerful tone which fostered a sense of self-righteousness. It never occurred to me that the Post Office was the sole arbiter of whether to pursue criminal prosecutions.

“I think what they’re saying is ‘we agree it’s going ahead, but other places have to agree it’s going ahead’.”

Mr Cook added: “I have never before come across a situation where a trading entity could bring criminal proceedings itself.

“I’m not blaming anyone else for this, it was a misunderstanding on my part, but I just haven’t been in this situation.”

He admitted he should have known the decision to prosecute was being made by the Post Office.

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