DAVID DAVIES, the ATL/Sandals group chief financial officer firmly reiterated earlier testimony that letters purporting to offer consent for the distribution of group pension surpluses were fake and that the company was deceived by them.

Davies yesterday maintained that position under searing cross-examination from Queens Counsel (QC) Frank Phipps and KD Knight as the trial of three former ATL executives on fraud charges continued in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court, Half-Way-Tree.

The defence had completed their examination of Davies in July but requested of Senior Magistrate Lorna Shelly-Williams that he be recalled for further examination because the magistrate had allowed the prosecution’s application to amend the conspiracy to defraud charges against the accused.

The prosecution saw the need to amend the indictment to make it clear that the conspiracy, from the outset, wasn’t to cause financial loss but to deceive the complainant companies that consent had been given for the distribution of $1.7 billion in surplus and not the defrauding of monies.

But three are alleged to have benefited from the distribution in that payments were credited to their pension accounts.

Yesterday, Phipps put it to Davies that he had said in his first statement in 2011 that he believed that the letters in question were signed in July 2008, but Davies said that he was led to believe so. He went on to explain that the fact that an interim report by audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in December 2010 had found no documents authorising the distribution of the funds helped to bolster his belief that the letters weren’t authentic.

But Phipps questioned why, if he had read the interim report in 2010, did he still put it in his statement of 2011 that he believed the letters were created in 2008. To that Davies said that he did so because he gave the statement before the final and conclusive report from PricewaterhouseCoopers was available. Challenged further he said he did change his view in his 2012 statement to reflect his belief that the letters were created in December 2010.

During his cross-examination by Knight, Davies maintained that the company had indeed been deceived by the action of the three accused.

Being tried are Catherine Barber, former general manager of the pension fund; Patrick Lynch, former chairman of the ATL Pension Fund and Dr Jeffrey Pyne, the former managing director of Gorstew Ltd, the holding company for Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart’s companies.

The prosecution believes that Pyne, Lynch and Barber conspired in the forging of the letters to deceive Gorstew that consent was given for the distribution of $1.7 billion in pension surplus.

The prosecution is further contending that the letters were created on December 15, 2010, the day Gorstew Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart confronted Lynch about the distribution. The prosecution maintains that the letters, which were presented to Stewart by Catherine Barber, the former general manager of the fund, were then backdated to 1998, 2002, 2005, and 2008. Importantly, Pyne had left the company seven months before December 15.

A new prosecution witness, attorney Trevor Patterson, is to take the stand today.