AUDITOR Carolyn Bell-Lewis yesterday made a few concessions key to the defence in the ATL pension fraud case, as lawyers for the accused concluded their cross-examination of her in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

The concessions, which go to the heart of the prosecution’s case, came as Bell-Wisdom underwent sustained grilling from Queen’s Counsel KD Knight and Deborah Martin who sought to prove their clients’ innocence.

At the end of Knight’s cross-examination of her, Bell-Wisdom, in what was her third day on the witness stand, breathed a sigh of relief, dropped both hands to her side in a limp manner, and turned her eyes up to the sky, which elicited laughter from those in court.

Catherine Barber, the former general manager of the Appliance Traders Pension Fund; Dr Jeffery Pyne, the former director of Gorstew Limited, the holding company of Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart’s companies; and Patrick Lynch, the former chairman of the pension fund, are accused of conspiring to defraud the group’s funds and Gorstew Ltd.

The three are accused of conspiring to have more than a billion dollars distributed from the surplus in the pension fund to workers and, in so doing, they allegedly benefited from the distribution, using forged documents to defraud the pension fund.

It is further alleged that the distribution was done without the approval of Gorstew Ltd. The three were arrested in April 2011.

Yesterday, Bell-Wisdom, a senior manager at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, conceded under cross-examination by Martin (representing Barber) that there is no written stipulation in any document that “consent of Mr Stewart is required” for there to be a distribution of surplus.

She also agreed that “nowhere, in any document, is it stipulated that the consent of the founder” (Gorstew Ltd) must be evident in writing to be valid.

Bell-Wisdom also agreed that the Memorandum of Association of the ATL Group Pension Fund Trustee Nominee Ltd doesn’t indicate that trustees are required to have the consent of the founder in carrying out any of their duties, “including the allocation of surplus”. She said also that neither is it stipulated in the Articles of Association.

Bell-Wisdom, who had led a review of the pension scheme in 2010, said she found that there was an effort on the part of Barber to be transparent and that there was a “genuine” effort on the part of the management of the ATL pension scheme to facilitate a “complete and comprehensive review of the system”.

In another aspect of the cross-examination, Barber said she wasn’t aware that there was a subcommittee formed by Gorstew to advise the Board of Trustees on matters relating to the handling of surplus.

Earlier, before Martin started her cross-examination of Bell-Wisdom, Knight continued in an effort to show that his client’s (Pyne) action was above board.

Bell-Wisdom is to face re-examination by attorney Gayle Nelson today, after which David Davies, the Sandals/ATL Group’s chief financial officer, will take the stand.