Faulty system: Fujitsu chief executive officer Takahito Tokita speaking at the firm’s headquarters in Tokyo. The company has engaged in lucrative public sector work in the United Kingdom over the last two decades including deals with the Defence Ministry. — Bloomberg
LONDON: Fujitsu Ltd is coming under renewed pressure from United Kingdom lawmakers over its role in a scandal which saw hundreds of people wrongly prosecuted for fraud, theft and false accounting.
The Tokyo-based company has supplied a computer system, known as Horizon, to UK Post Offices since around the turn of the millennium.
Soon after, discrepancies began to appear in shop tills and the Post Office accused branch managers of stealing.
By 2015, at least 700 sub-postmasters, as they are known, were prosecuted based on evidence from the faulty computer system. Hundreds were bankrupted or jailed.
Fujitsu is now facing calls to be banned from any new government contracts, having won £6.8bil (US$8.7bil) of work for the UK’s public sector since 2012, according to data company Tussell.
Some UK politicians also want the information technology (IT) company to pay a share of the compensation owed to sub-postmasters.
Fujitsu is “at the heart of this entire saga”, said James Arbuthnot, a former Member of Parliament, who took the campaign for justice for sub-postmasters to the House of Lords.
“I would myself advise them to make an offer of a large amount to get ahead of the game, because it’s hardly fair for the taxpayer to bear the cost of this entire saga. Fujitsu should bear its part of the blame, and of the cost.”
A spokesperson for Fujitsu said it had apologised for its role in the suffering of sub-postmasters. It is taking part in a UK government inquiry to understand what happened.
“The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on postmasters’ lives and that of their families,” the spokesperson said in an email.
“Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it.”
Conservative MP David Davis said Fujitsu should be frozen out of future government contracts until it had answered key questions about its role in the saga.
“I would certainly suspend any possibility of new contracts until that is over,” he told the BBC.
Any impact on Fujitsu’s shares from the scandal depends on the UK government’s plans and any further legal procedures, according to Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell Plc.
Given Fujitsu’s US$28bil market capitalisation, “the £138mil paid out by three Post Office compensation schemes looks like a relatively small sum,” Mould added.
Fujitsu’s lucrative public sector work in the United Kingdom over the last two decades includes deals with the Defence Ministry, the Financial Conduct Authority and HM Revenue and Customs.
The Horizon system was worth nearly £2.4bil, according to Tussell, with a £36mil extension to keep it running until 2025.
It also won a £700mil court settlement with the National Health Service over a plan to digitise medical information.
When the programme failed, at a cost of at least £2.7bil, Fujitsu was sacked.
The IT firm then sued the NHS and a court ruled in its favour. — Bloomberg
