Chief Financial Officer of Petrojam, Delroy Brown, informed the court Thursday that the relationship between himself and former General Manager, Floyd Grindley, soured after he questioned and denied payment for an invoice that came to him.

Grindley and the former chairman of Petrojam, Perceval Singh, are being tried for fraud in relation to the submission of claims amounting to US$73,620 between December 2016 and May 2018 for overseas travels which were never undertaken.

Allegations are that Singh submitted claims for foreign travel, which he did not attend, while Grindley is accused of aiding and abetting in the matter. Both were initially slapped with eight counts of aiding and abetting and obtaining money by false pretence. Singh was charged with 12 offences relating to the US$73,620 that he allegedly took from the company. Both were slapped with additional charges, which included fraudulent conversion, aiding and abetting fraudulent conversion, conspiracy to defraud, and a count of obtaining money by false pretence.

Brown, in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court, said that he refused to make certain payouts because, in his estimation, it was the wrong thing to do.

“In June 2017, I sent an e-mail to Mr Grindley to say that I was disappointed with his use of expletives. The relationship, I wouldn’t say it got cold, but it was not like my experience with other managers in the past. I e-mailed to tell him that in my entire work career, that it was the first time that undue influence was brought to bear, asking me to do something that was not correct. I was asked by Mr Grindley to make a contribution to the Diabetes Association.”

Brown told the court that requests were made for him to make payouts to numerous entities, which he did not do because the requests lacked approval from the Board. When the Board gave the approvals and the documents were returned to him, he noticed that the names on the Board’s resolution did not match those on the cheques.

The trial will resume on Monday.

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– Jason Cross