The truth that has been suffered admits many labels. Judicial truth is that which emerges from a judgment in a trial, as a logical consequence of the evidence presented. It is understood that it will not always coincide with the so-called material truth, what really happened and what is not easy to ascertain. For this view, which does not come from philosophy but from law, what cannot be proven should not be taken into account, especially when sentencing. There is a long-standing struggle between the truth that is demonstrated and that which is proclaimed. Our term TRUE derives from Latin truths, which in turn comes from verus—the root is present in verisimilar, verifiable, true, assert...— and refers us to the idea of firmness. But for the Greeks, it has to do with forgetting. TRUE It would be what does not remain hidden, but is revealed and can, in some way, be remembered and evoked.
In the case of the Correos scandal (Post Office), in the United Kingdom, it has taken more than a decade to align judicial truth with the plain truth. This is a particularly curious case, because there is another truth, the official one—the narrative tailored to power—that has been unmasked. This feat is due to committed media (such as the BBC) and a popular series (Mr. Bates vs the Post Office) that pushed public opinion to pressure politicians and demand accountability. This time, the media's truth has not been complacent but has gone its own way.
The British government defined the case as the worst miscarriage of justice of all time, and the first installment of the report to Parliament, presented this July, helps to capture the magnitude of the tragedy. For two decades, thousands of post office branch owners were accused of embezzlement and forgery when the blame for the erroneous settlements lay with Horizon, the brand-new accounting software developed by Fujitsu. Losses soared, and the "missing" sums multiplied thanks to the computer system, before the astonished eyes of employees desperately trying to balance the books.
The report by Wyn Williams, a renowned retired judge, documents the true scale of the disaster. Added to the financial ruin of those affected was the ongoing criminal prosecution. Up to a thousand people were convicted without direct evidence. The personal toll is more tragic than suspected: at least thirteen suicides, alcoholism, broken relationships, loss of homes... And the impact was devastating: personal shame, social ostracism. Not least because the Post Office was a respected institution, staffed by staff serving their communities, not bureaucrats condemned to repetitive and alienating work.The postman in Bukovsky's ironic self-portrait or Bartleby the Scrivener In Melville's nihilistic agony.
If we take a panoramic look at the profound implications, the solution must also be so: annulment of all convictions (only 93, so far, due to the incapacity of the judicial system) and full, fair, and swift reparations. Among the innovative contributions is the recommendation to extend compensation to family members, because the suffering was also extensive.
At the origin of the catastrophe is a computer blunder, but the chain of judicial errors was avoidable, and the cover-up practices turned a technical incident into a huge lie cooked up with the worst cynicism: Correos manipulated the data while denying that remote access to the system was possible; He used the coercive power of confidentiality agreements to prevent disclosure of the schemes; he threatened the BBC with legal action to stop the program from airing. Panorama, where the situation was presented independently, and, in a display of institutional sadism, made the victims believe that their case was unique and unusual.
The harsh truth emerges through the perseverance of the head of one of the offices, Alan Bates, who never settled. An example of constructive and inspiring leadership from someone who does not pursue personal gain, but rather justice for all. Someone who does not know how to get angry, but does not shrink back either. The contribution of Richard Roll, the Fujitsu engineer who publicly revealed the system's vulnerability and the schemes used to hide it, was decisive. He not only showed the importance of whistleblowers (internal whistleblowers) and the clumsy pressures they suffer, but also a weak organizational culture that places greater importance on efficiency than on justice. Perhaps automated systems don't have schedules, don't take vacations, or go on strike... but improperly supervised, they're a time bomb or, even worse, an antipersonnel mine.
The triumph of David over Goliath, especially if it's the result of collective action, is comforting. Despite being partial and relative. Those responsible for corporate misdeeds everywhere—from Correos and Fujitsu in the United Kingdom to Ferrovial, Entrecanales, or Equipo Económico in our country—never suffer strict judicial siege or real censure. At most, there's a symbolic punishment. Paula Vennells, the CEO of Post Office Ltd., who shed crocodile tears in public appearances, had to return her title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire—Mr. Bates was decorated, in an exercise of poetic justice—but found shelter (as president, of course) in a National Health Service (NHS) trust fund. Needless to say, he hasn't returned a single pound of the substantial bonuses he received at the Post Office, even though his undignified conduct undermined confidence in a model public company. Despite small victories, which should be celebrated, the relationship, described by Alba Rico, of direct proportionality persists between the unpunished crimes of the major ones and the punishable crimes of the minor ones, between the grandiloquence of formal legality and the selective sordidness of real legality.
