PATRICK Lynch, the former chairman of the ATL Pension Fund who is now being tried for fraud, yesterday launched a verbal assault on a prosecution witness, telling her ‘So yuh come here to f… me up too!’

Claudette McLeish, trustee of the pension fund and former colleague at ATL, told police in a report of the assault that Lynch, in the hearing of other persons, also hurled a thinly veiled threat at her.

McLeish went to the police immediately after a break in her testimony before Senior Resident Magistrate Lorna Shelly-Williams in the pension fraud trial in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate Court, Half-Way-Tree.

The prosecution in the case has accused Lynch of being the mastermind behind the forging of four letters purported to be proof that consent was given for the distribution of $1.7 billion of pension fund surplus that Gorstew, ATL boss Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart’s holding company, is contesting. Lynch and two other former executives benefitted from the distribution through payments to their pension accounts.

As Lynch arrived for the trial yesterday morning, he approached McLeish with whom he had worked for many years and who was sitting in the yard outside the court awaiting the start of the day’s hearing. He used an expletive, addressed her as a ‘bitch’ while repeatedly asking “So yuh come here to f… me up like the others…”

McLeish calmly responded that she was there to tell what she knew and that was all. But Lynch persisted, addressing her in a derogatory manner and saying that he had “covered your ass” in the past, before walking away.

Lynch is being tried along with Catherine Barber, the former general manager of the pension fund, and Dr Jeffrey Pyne, former managing director of Gorstew for the alleged forgery of letters dated back to 1998, but which the prosecution believe to have been created in December 2010.