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Ex-PO boss 'unaware' of prosecution powers

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date13 April 2024
Publication titleHuddersfield Daily Examiner
Alan Cook said he had not heard anything "sufficiently categoric" to suggest that the Post Office made prosecutorial decisions and said he blamed himself for "not picking up on it"

Mr Cook, who was managing director of the Post Office from 2006-2010, described his lack of knowledge on the subject as a "regret", saying he had "never come across a situation before that a trading entity could initiate criminal prosecutions themselves."

He told the inquiry he did not ask questions on the matter until he saw an article in Computer Weekly in May 2009.

During Mr Cook's time in the witness box on Friday, counsel to the inquiry Sam Stevens asked: "Your evidence is still that in no point in the years that you were the managing director, (nobody) in the security or investigations team raised the fact that they made decisions to prosecute?"

Mr Cook said: "That is my position, definitely. "I think it's sometimes what's said and what's heard, and the problem that I was bringing to the piece was I just had a presumption and I didn't hear something sufficiently categoric to say 'what, you mean we decide on our own and no-one can stop us?'

"I never asked that question - well I did obviously when we got to the Computer Weekly article (in 2009) which we'll get to, but prior to that point, I had gone through not picking up that.

"I'm not blaming them for not spelling it out enough, to be frank I'm blaming me for not picking up on it."

At the beginning of his evidence, Mr Cook said he wanted to "most strongly"...

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