THE Post Office’s decision to sack independent forensic accountants who found bugs in their IT system was today branded a “disgusting” cover-up by a victim of the Horizon scandal.

The BBC said that the government was in full knowledge of the move, which it unearthed in minutes from a Post Office board subcommittee meeting in April 2014, named Project Sparrow.

The subcommittee asked for “options to support them or reduce” the role of the firm called Second Sight after it submitted a report in July 2013 which identified bugs that raised concerns over the reliability of Horizon data used to prosecute subpostmasters.

The Post Office was warned it was in breach of its legal duties as prosecuted subpostmasters should have been told about the bugs.

The board expressed concern that the review from the forensic accountants exposed them to wrongful conviction claims and the subcommittee decided to bring the investigation of subpostmasters’ cases “within the control of the Post Office,” the BBC said after seeing unredacted versions of the minutes.

Former subpostmistress Jo Hamilton was wrongfully convicted in 2008 of stealing thousands of pounds from a village shop in Hampshire based on faulty Horizon IT evidence.

She said the move was like “tipping the board up when you’re losing” a game of Monopoly, a “massive cover-up” and “we knew the government were in it up to their necks.”

More than 700 branch managers were prosecuted by the Post Office after Fujitsu’s faulty accounting software Horizon made it look as though money was missing from their shops.

The Post Office claimed it was “not appropriate” to comment on allegations being made outside of the inquiry into the scandal.

A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that No 10 was taking the “reports extremely seriously.”