Sheffield dad-of-five says Post Office treated family like 'slaves' as scandal cost them more than £140,000

Another victim of the Post Office scandal in Sheffield says he and his wife, who have five daughters, were treated like 'slaves'.

Mujahid Faisal ran Norwood Post Office on Herries Road with his wife for five years between 2015 and 2020.

He told how they paid £39,000 for alleged shortfalls due to the faulty Horizon IT system and ended up selling their business for just £15,000 - £105,000 less than they had paid for it - as prospective buyers 'backed off' after hearing of the scandal.

"Our hopes and dreams of a good life, working hard to operate and build our family post office business have been destroyed," he said in a witness statement submitted as part of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

"We invested everything we had in buying and running the post office. All of our life savings have gone, and we are in deep debt and constantly on the verge of bankruptcy."

He added: "There was no fair process. There was no way to challege the Post Office and their system. We felt like slaves and the Post Office were our masters."

Mr Faisal described how he and his wife experienced shortfalls due to the Horizon system from the moment they took on the business, which were typically £50-80 a week but up to £600.

They spent their own money plugging those supposed shortfalls until they had nothing left and had to ask the Post Office to deduct what they allegedly owed from their pay.

In total, they say, they paid around £39,000 - £10,000 of which they put into the system using their own funds and the rest of which was deducted from their salary.

Eventually, the situation became so dire they ended up 'working without any remuneration at all'.

Auditor's calculations were 'substantially incorrect'

When they were audited in April 2016 they were initially told there was a shortfall, only for an employee to point out the auditors had miscounted. There was no apology, said Mr Faisal.

The auditors returned in September 2019 and this time told Mr Faisal and his wife they were £7,400 down and they had to 'pay on the spot'.

On this occasion he heard the auditor speaking to head office and explaining that the system initially showed the branch was £10,000 up but that the auditor believed this was an error, which after five minutes on the phone was 'corrected'.

Mr Faisal said: "It was clear to me that the Post Office knew that there were problems with their new system also, but they just did not care.

"In this case it appeared that the system was saying we were due a credit of £10,000. However, despite this, the auditors said that we were short by £7,400."

'Threat of prosecution hanging over our heads'

He explained how he and his wife were given no opportunity to check the auditors' calculations despite the Post Office's previous error and what they had just overheard on the phone

"They just demanded payment with the threat of prosecution hanging over our heads," he said in his statement, submitted back in January 2022.

After the auditors left, he and his assistant both counted the money and found the auditor's calculations were 'substantially incorrect'.

"We were sure the problem lay with the Post Office's Horizon System," he said. However, what could we do? We were powerless in the face of the Post Office. We had to pay or face prosecution."

That audit persuaded them it was time to sell up quickly, before they were 'completely ruined or prosecuted', and they ended up having to accept a big loss.

'My children are victims also'

Mr Faisal became a claimant in the successful group litigation against Post Office Ltd but said the money he and his wife received was a 'fraction of my actual losses, and took no account of the wider suffering my wife and I experienced'.

As a party to the group litigation, he added, he was excluded from the Historic Shortfall Scheme.

The stress, he said, led to him and his wife experiencing depression, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels as they suffered constant sleepless nights.

"We will never get back those years of our life that we wasted in the post office, when we worked without pay for years because of that incredible amount of money we had to put into the post office to make up for shortfalls caused by the Post Office's Horizon System," he said.

"My children are victims also. They lost much of their childhood because their parents were slaves to the Post Office and its faulty Horizon System."

He added: "The only way our trust can be restored is if those who were responsible for this scandal are held to account."

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted on the basis of data from the faulty Horizon IT system between 1999 and 2015, with some being jailed for false accounting and theft, and many more facing financial ruin.

The scandal, described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history, has recaptured the public attention thanks to the ITV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office.

The public backlash has led to former Post Office boss Paula Vennells handing back her CBE and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising to bring in a new law to 'swiftly exonerate and compensate victims'.