Fraud accused on supermarket ban

Fraud accused Andre Ricardo Barrow has been ordered to stay away from the Lionel C. Hill Supermarket until criminal charges levelled against him, involving the establishment, are adjudicated.

Magistrate Kim Butcher imposed that bail condition on the 36-year-old driver from Carmichael Land, St George on Monday when he appeared on three charges.

He was granted $10 000 bail with one surety to reappear before the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court on November 16.

Barrow must also report to the Station Hill Police Station every Tuesday before noon.

He is alleged to have, with intent to defraud, uttered to the supermarket a forged bill of exchange purporting to be a Government of Barbados payable order cheque made payable to Kevyn Callender for $889, knowing it to be forged.

It is also alleged that he tried to obtain from the establishment a quantity of goods totaling $158.80 and $730.20 via the same means.

Barrow was not required to plead to those indictable charges or to that of not being at his place of abode, he had with him three Government of Barbados payable order cheques purporting to be genuinely issued by the Barbados Treasury Department in the course of the offence of criminal deception.

The alleged offences are said to have been committed on June 10.

Station Sergeant Randolph Boyce objected to bail for the accused based on the nature and seriousness of the offences, the strength of the evidence, and that the business community needed protection from alleged perpetrators.

“We are aware that [those are] alleged offences where violence may not have been used. However, the impact of this type of offence on a business can be extremely severe,” the prosecutor said, adding that the community needed to be protected in “these hard economic times”.

However, Barrows’s attorneys Michael Lashley Q.C., Ken Mason, and Simon Clarke argued that the nature and seriousness of the offence were not themselves a bar against bail.

Lashley submitted that the strength of the evidence was a matter for trial as the evidence had not been tested.

“We cannot speak to the weight of the evidence at this stage,” he insisted.

The Queen’s Counsel also knocked the prosecution’s argument that the business community needed to be protected from his client.

“There is nothing to say that the accused went on a spree out there defrauding businesses island-wide,” argued Lashley who stated that the prosecution had put forward no grounds to show that his client would not show up for court when needed or that he would interfere with witnesses.

The defence lawyer further urged the court to exercise its discretion in Barrow’s favour, as he was not known to the court and neither did he hear from the prosecutor that “my client is a threat to society”.

“My client is a good candidate for bail,” Lashley said before Magistrate Butcher granted his client his pre-trial freedom.