Former Submit Workplace authorized boss referred to disciplinary council
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has referred a former Submit Workplace common counsel to the Solicitors Disciplinary Council over her statutory public inquiry no present.
Jane MacLeod, who headed up the Submit Workplace’s authorized division from 2015 to 2019, has been referred attributable to failing to provide oral proof to the Submit Workplace Horizon scandal public inquiry.
MacLeod, who lives in Australia, headed the Submit Workplace’s authorized division from 2015 to 2019, throughout a interval when the organisation was trying to quell the rising scandal. She is a “vital particular person” within the Metropolitan Police-led legal investigation into the Submit Workplace scandal, generally known as Operation Olympos.
In accordance with the SRA: “The tribunal has licensed that there’s a case to reply in respect of allegations that are or embody that: Between 11 April 2024 and 31 July 2024, Ms MacLeod didn’t co-operate absolutely with the Submit Workplace Horizon IT Inquiry (‘The Inquiry’) in relation to a request for her to provide oral proof to the Inquiry.”
The interval by which MacLeod headed up the Submit Workplace authorized division included the Excessive Courtroom battle with subpostmasters, which she frequently attended. The Submit Workplace spent greater than £100m in taxpayers’ cash trying to stop subpostmasters from proving the defective Horizon system was accountable for unexplained account shortfalls.
In a written assertion in Might 2024, inquiry chair Wyn Williams stated the general public inquiry “thought of it vital to listen to oral proof from Ms MacLeod”, including: “Additional, it provided to fulfill Ms MacLeod’s journey and lodging bills. Nevertheless, Ms MacLeod has made it clear that she won’t cooperate with the inquiry by offering oral proof, whether or not by attending the inquiry in individual or by giving proof remotely through stay video hyperlink.”
Talking to Laptop Weekly on the time of Williams’ assertion, one former subpostmaster stated: “For somebody who took such a eager curiosity within the trials to not present up for the inquiry speaks volumes as a result of she might have given them plenty of helpful data.”
In 2015, MacLeod wrote a threatening letter to Laptop Weekly because it was investigating and reporting on the scandal. This got here on the time the Submit Workplace was sacking unbiased forensic investigation agency Second Sight and ending its mediation scheme.
As MacLeod is a non-British nationwide dwelling outdoors the UK, Williams stated he had “no enough technique of compelling MacLeod to attend pursuant to the Inquiries Act 2005”. He added that he had vital proof related to the previous authorized boss: “I shall be capable to evaluate what Ms MacLeod says in her witness assertion alongside the intensive contemporaneous documentation I’ve acquired.”
Jonathan Peddie, govt director of investigations, enforcement and litigation on the SRA, stated the case is in relation to “conduct that befell within the interval after the primary occasions of the Submit Workplace Horizon scandal”.
He added that wider investigations are ongoing: “This consists of points relating on to the Horizon scandal, the place we’re working intently with the Inquiry group and the Metropolitan Police. We will and can act if we discover that solicitors we regulate fail to fulfill our requirements.”
The Submit Workplace scandal was first uncovered by Laptop Weekly in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered attributable to Horizon accounting software program, which led to essentially the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British historical past (see beneath timeline of Laptop Weekly articles in regards to the scandal since 2009).
