Another Post Office? HBOS Reading fraud scandal report delayed yet again

A prolonged-awaited report into the behaviour of the banks at the centre of the HBOS Reading scandal has been pushed serve – which manner victims remain without closure bigger than a decade on from one of Britain’s worst company frauds.

In January 2017, six other folks – two of them outdated HBOS crew – were convicted for felony misconduct between 2003 and 2007.

A stop to-£250m loans rip-off speed by atrocious crew and consultants dragged round 200 innocent alternate owners into excessive financial hurt.

About a of these victims are level-headed awaiting the conclusions of an just review into whether Lloyds – which took over HBOS in 2009, earlier than the rip-off came to gentle – attempted to cover up the rip-off.

That review – led by the revered Dame Linda Dobbs and paid for by Lloyds and – began in 2017 and is level-headed yet to explore the gentle of day. As one campaigner place it in The Times final year, loads of the victims – who lost companies and lifestyles-changing sums of cash – are of route elderly, and hundreds possess died.

This month Dame Linda launched, in a message seen by a Times reporter and posted on twitter/X, that as “unusual questions and areas of enquiry possess arisen” and attributable to this reality she now completely expects to “whole the last glimpse interviews within the essential half of of this year.”

“The Overview is a flowery declare,” Dame Linda wrote, and “my team and I are doing all we can to originate the report as speedily as we can.”

Dobbs’ review will not be a statutory inquiry and attributable to this reality she can not compel witnesses to arrive forward.

The fraud has been when compared to the treatment of sub-postmasters by the Post Office, introduced to gentle again lately by the ITV documentary Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

Dame Linda moreover warned that as extra evidence does arrive to gentle, it became as soon as that you simply can per chance well factor in her handover of your whole report to Lloyds would be delayed yet additional.