Police investigating the scandal of the horizon post office has now identified seven suspects, with more than 45 people classified as “people of interest”.
A national team of “on -scale” officers has been in place for more than six months as part of Operation Olympos – dedicated to the search for crimes related to the horizon post office scandal.
The number of suspects has increased to seven since Christmas, as part of a UK in scale involving 100 officers.
Four have now been interviewed under caution.
Hundreds of subposters were wrongly sentenced to having stolen after defective IT software created false accounting deficits in the branches of the post office between 1999 and 2015.
Commander Stephen Clayman, Command Gold for Operation Olympos, described a “enormous change” in terms of their investigation and “significant progress”.
Commander Stephen Clayman
“We have more than four million documents that will reach around six million documents,” he said, “but we are starting to work methodically through them and watching individuals associated with certain proceedings.”
He described a “pool of around 45 people” classified as “people of interest”, this number “expected to grow”.
He added that the officers have questioned “some” in the past and “more recently” and examine the offenses of perverting the course of justice and perjury.
The “wider swimming pool” of people of interest is made up of post office investigators, lawyers and “management” in Fujitsu and the post office.
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The post office knew the defective computer system
The team of officers will identify actions that could constitute criminal offenses on an individual and business basis.
All the decisions made on the advisable opportunity will only occur after the investigation conclusions of the post office is “published and revised”.
Operation Operation officers are one of four teams – a London hub and three regional teams – which have been described as “very motivated” in England and Wales.
Police in Scotland and the Northern Ireland police also help.
CMDR CLAYMAN said that officers “build a solid case” to transmit to the Crown prosecution service.
Officer working in one of the four Olympos teams of the operation
He also added that, compared to the investigation, his officers will have to “prove it to the criminal standard … a much higher standard”.
He described feeling “optimistic” and “confident” that the teams will have “successful results”, and said that they “work as hard and as quickly as they can”.
The teams are involved in what has been described as a “targeted strategy that comes to the heart of the problems”.
Their surveys are supervised by the council of national police chiefs and the metropolitan police.
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The victims were also informed that the police will not re -examine all the cases but “threw a speculative examination on the cases” to focus on the key people involved and the proofs of prosecution.
Operation Olympos also uses special software to help process the amount of evidence to browse the hardware compared to key events and identified cases.
Of the four suspects interviewed under caution, two were interviewed at the end of 2021, one at the end of 2024 and the last at the beginning of 2025.