Bank rep confirms faulty cheques

Mandeville, Manchester:

A representative from the bank at which a number of fraudulent cheques were encashed yesterday continued giving testimony in the multimillion-dollar Manchester Municipal Corporation fraud trial yesterday.

She confirmed that there were discrepancies with some of the cheques, noting the absence of the signature of one of the two signatories on some of the cheques.

Under cross-examination by attorney-at-law Joel Nelson, who represents former bank employee Radcliffe McLean in the case, the witness said that when irregularities with transactions are found, a meeting is held with the parties involved and the supervisors.

Expert teller

Nelson questioned if for the period 2013 to 2017, his client, who was employed as an expert teller, had any irregularities.

She replied in the negative, adding that a warning was never issued to McLean.

The witness was further pressed as to whether McLean’s employment with the bank was severed as a result of the charges laid against him.

“I cannot speak to that,” she responded.

With tellers at each level – new, intermediate and expert – given a certain limit their transactions cannot exceed, the witness said that the bank’s system ensures that transactions cannot be overridden by disabling the functionality.

Through further questioning, the witness revealed that the transactions of all tellers are checked at the end of the day by supervisors and are given or denied authorisation throughout the day if needs be.

Two other witness were called yesterday, including a representative of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, who spoke briefly to the requests he received from police to provide information on accused former Deputy Superintendent of Roads and Works Sanja Elliott.

A representative from Digicel also spoke briefly to requests she received from the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency for information on three of the accused.

She will return to the stand today.

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