By FARRAH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
fjohnson@tribunemedia.net
A FORMER Acting Postmaster General testified yesterday that the passbook copies Bahamian businessman Rudolph “Rudy” King submitted when a discrepancy was found in his account did not appear to be genuine.
Debbie Pennerman-Seymour made the statement when she gave evidence during the impresario’s trial.
King is accused of defrauding the General Post Office of over half a million dollars, then laundering that amount between 2012 and 2015.
Prosecutors allege he defrauded the Post Office’s savings account of $661,648.
King has maintained his not guilty plea during his trial before Senior Magistrate Derence Rolle Davis.
When Mrs Pennerman-Seymour took the stand yesterday, she said she worked as a public officer for the General Post Office for 47 years.
She said the last position she held before her retirement was Acting Postmaster General. She also said she worked at the Freeport Post Office for over ten years and stated she had the opportunity to meet King when she was stationed there.
Mrs Pennerman-Seymour said she met him personally about three times but saw him frequent the Post Office to conduct transactions on several occasions.
She said she discovered that “something was wrong” with King’s passbooks because the books purported to have funds on it, but the funds were not recorded on their ledger.
“At one point I called Mr King to tell him to bring in the original passbooks so we can balance and investigate what’s going on with his account,” she said.
“I contacted him to bring in the original books so we could have put them against the ledger… to make sure those transactions were there. What he turned in was copies of what looked like the last page of each book, along with some copied cheques.”
Mrs Pennerman-Seymour said on one occasion, King came in “after hours” and handed an envelope to a security officer who later contacted her. She said when she opened the package, she discovered the documents inside were not the ones that she had asked for.
She also said the copies of the transactions from a passbook appeared as if they were cut and pasted.
“They didn’t look genuine to me,” she said. “It wasn’t and it wasn’t what I asked for.”
When a copy of one of the documents was shown to the witness in court, she said the numbers on the fifth entry of the sheet “did not look right”. She also said the balance column looked like it was “written over in heavy, heavy pen”.
Her assertion was followed by an objection from defence counsel Damian Gomez, QC, who argued Mrs Pennerman-Seymour was not an expert in forgery and could not give “opinionated evidence”.
Nonetheless, when Mrs Pennerman-Seymour was shown another exhibit, she said it looked like it had been “cut and paste” because the “words did not line up with the other side”.
After studying the third exhibit, she said she noticed the sentence: “The words of this book must be produced whenever any money is deposited or withdrawn” were not printed on the second exhibit.
Yesterday, the witness was also shown four letters of authorisation addressed to the Bank of the Bahamas requesting to withdraw the amounts of $10,000, $7,000, $10,000 and $100,000.
When asked if she considered King to be a Family Island customer, she said “as far as she knew” he lived in Nassau.
During Mr Gomez’s cross-examination of Mrs Pennerman-Seymour, she admitted that a “practice did develop” at the Post Office where customers were allowed to have more than $6,000 on their account. Still, she insisted it “should not have happened”.
She also revealed the Post Office did not have a computerised system at the time the fraud was alleged to have taken place and said “everything was manual” during that time period.
When Mrs Pennerman-Seymour was asked to look at the exhibits she previously examined, she admitted the figures on the sheet did add up.
And when Mr Gomez noted the documents she “criticised as badly copied” bore the Post Office stamp and initials of workers against each of the entries, she agreed.
Mr Gomez asked: “...So, this fancy allegation that he was just coming in and getting money is false, isn’t it?”
“When I look at the auditor’s report the withdrawals outweighed the deposits,” Mrs Pennerman-Seymour replied.
The matter continues today.
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