A woman who was expecting $15,000 from Government’s Faith-Based tourism fund said she never received a dime of it from theft-accused Andre Curtis.Angria Bassett helped organise a conference called “a Nation at Risk,” held at the Hamilton Princess hotel in October 2007.She said Mr Curtis, 49, who was in charge of the Faith-Based Tourism [FBT] initiative, committed to giving the project $15,000-worth of financial help.Mr Curtis is on trial accused of stealing more than $130,000 of public money FBT between April, 2007 and April, 2008 and using it for his own personal benefit.The Department of Tourism outsourced FBT to Mr Curtis’s company, Harvest Investment Holdings Ltd.A $400,000 contract was signed in April, 2007, agreeing that FBT was to attract tourists to Bermuda by sponsoring religious events and conferences. The project was supposed to boost the economy by bringing tourist dollars to the Island.According to the terms of the contract, Mr Curtis was to provide ten FBT events and generate 2,200 visitors in the first year. He was also to attract sponsorship money for the events.However, various witnesses from the Department of Tourism told the trial last week that they had difficulty obtaining information from Mr Curtis. Government refused to pay him the last instalment of his contract when he could not prove how many overseas visitors his events brought to Bermuda.Yesterday, Ms Bassett said the $15,000 for “A Nation at Risk” was supposed to come from Mr Curtis in instalments. When it did not come through, that caused problems with organising the conference.She explained that one chunk of cash was needed to book airfares for the four guest speakers at the event, after the date and venue had been fixed. She listed two of the speakers as a 12-year-old “prophet” named Parris Jackson and a “prophetess and entrepreneur” from Florida named Jacqueline Del Rosario.Ms Bassett said because the FBT money did not come through in advance, as expected, the airfares went up in price before they could be booked. At one point, the young prophet’s ticket was booked but his father’s was not, raising the prospect of the child having to travel alone.“It was very stressful for me,” she told the jury, explaining she had trouble tracking Mr Curtis down and achieving results after meetings. I’m extremely busy and I would leave my job to come to the office to pick up a cheque and someone wasn’t there and someone had locked the cabinet and the chequebook was locked away. To me it began to become very shady,” she alleged.Ms Bassett told the jury the conference did go ahead, but she never received any receipts showing Mr Curtis paid for items such as hotel rooms, ballroom hire and refreshments.Asked by prosecutor Kirsty-Ann Kiellor if she ever received any of the $15,000 from FBT, Ms Bassett replied: “I have not received one dime.”Under cross-examination from defence lawyer Mark Pettingill, Ms Bassett said she did not realise FBT was supposed to attract overseas visitors to Bermuda and thought it was for local people.Mr Pettingill inquired: “You at no time received any specific direction on how funds were spent from the Bermuda Government Department of Tourism?”“No,” replied Ms Bassett. In response to a question from Mr Pettingill, she said the only overseas visitors at the event were the four speakers who came, and perhaps four of their family members.Another one of the event organisers, Deborah Trimm, estimated during evidence on Friday that there were ten overseas visitors among the 500-plus people who attended the conference. Mr Curtis told Government there were 165.