Morning
Angela van den Bogerd is being cross-examined in court today.
On Friday the judge ruled of Mrs van den Bogerd’s evidence in the Common Issues trial:
“she did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters, and mislead me.”
Misleading a judge on oath in court is a very serious business. The judge makes clear that Mrs van den Bogerd was in a witness box to give the Post Office’s side of the argument. It was her evidence, and as such, had to be honest. It was not. It was false.
Mrs van den Bogerd’s LinkedIn profile boasts of her “outstanding” leadership abilities, with honesty being a key part of her professional make up:
The above claim is simply not true. Mrs van den Bogerd deliberately gave false information to a judge in court in order to try to mislead him.
The definition of perjury, according to the Perjury Act is:
“If any person lawfully sworn as a witness or as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, he shall be guilty of perjury”.
It seems on any reasonable reading of the above Act, Mrs van den Bogerd may have committed a criminal offence.
Having dealt with the manner in which Mrs van den Bogerd attempted to mislead him and how Nick Beal, the Post Office’s Head of Agents’ Development and Remuneration’s evidence appeared to be geared towards a public-relations exercise rather than the truth, the judge rules:
“Unless I state to the contrary, I would only accept the evidence of Mrs Van den Bogerd and Mr Beal in controversial areas of fact in issue in this Common Issue trial if these are clearly and uncontrovertibly corroborated by contemporaneous documents.”
I don’t know what the Post Office thinks of having two senior managers its ranks who are now so discredited, their evidence is considered to be worthless unless special circumstances apply.
And I don’t know if a prosecution of Mrs van den Bogerd would be considered in the public interest. I’ve written to the Post Office asking them for a specific comment or interview wrt to Mrs van den Bogerd. I am not expecting anything meaningful in response.
Whatever comes of this – it tees this morning up nicely. It’ll be interesting to see if Mrs van den Bogerd’s style of giving evidence changes (to a more honest one), or the way in which the claimants’ QC or the judge presses her for answers is any different.
Housekeeping
I have nearly finished a close read of the judgment – when it gets into the findings wrt to the Common Issues it gets very interesting. Some of the claimants’ constructions are dismissed, others are accepted. Although there are volumnious case law references (to show his Lordship’s working out), the reasoning behind the decisions is explained in relatively simple English. I’ll keep working to publish the interesting chunks of the judgment (and eventually get down to some kind of summary) whilst resuming work on the Horizon trial.
The comments in the judgment on the NFSP are devastating. More on that anon, but I see no reason to change any word in the article I wrote about them last year.
Thanks again for the donations, the kind comments, the tweets and re-tweets and your (metaphorical) attempts to wave this judgment in the faces of the right people. I am sure many of you are privately emailing media organisations, your MPs, the CCRC, the CPS, the business minister, the NFSP (if you are still a member), the CWU and possibly even the Post Office itself with your own questions.
Kind regards
Nick
Please feel free to forward this email. The more people who read it, the more people find out about what is the biggest trial going through the UK courts right now.