The prosecutor who convicted fraudster Terrence Smith has criticised Director of Public Prosecutions Vinette Graham Allen for not giving him adequate staff to support his efforts.

Kulandra Ratneser, who handled the case as a consultant, was meant to have the assistance of a principle Crown counsel. However he said a series of unfortunate events left him with no help apart from his capable but inexperienced junior, Nicole Smith.

?I was disappointed that I was not given sufficient support,? he said. ?In a case of this magnitude in any other jurisdiction there would be a leader like myself and at least two other Crown counsels assisting. The reason for that is that this is an extremely complex fraud with financial rewards to the Government on conviction under the Proceeds of Crime Act. My only hope is that when there?s a fraud again, the lead counsel will not be left as I was with a case of this magnitude with the most junior member of staff who had never been to Supreme Court before.?

Mr. Ratneser, 73, explained that Juan Wolffe was going to assist him as principle Crown counsel on the case, but it was adjourned and Mr. Wolffe left to become a magistrate last summer.

A replacement Crown counsel, Roger Kimbell, joined the Department from Australia in January this year. He was set to help in the Smith case but resigned from the department after just two days citing what Mr. Ratneser described as ?personal reasons?. This was just weeks before the slated February 13 trial start date.

?A couple of weeks before, I was told that I couldn?t have any other Crown counsels. The DPP said that she couldn?t provide somebody so I had to take all the responsibility of doing this case. A Crown counsel would have made my job much easier but they said there was no staff or something. To me, that?s totally unacceptable, but I?d taken on this case and I was not going to let the Government down,? he said.

However, Mr. Ratneser ? who was Acting DPP before Mrs. Graham Allen took over ? stressed that he has nothing but praise for Ms Smith for the key role she has performed.

?Despite my misgivings, she became an excellent junior. Although she is the most junior member of the staff I see a lot of potential in her as a young Bermudian and she proved to be extremely capable. She took on most of the evidence after I finished off the main witnesses. She realised the responsibilities of being my sole junior in the case and that at any time I might not be well enough to continue, and rose to the occasion,? he said.

Mr. Ratneser explained that one reason it took so long for the case of a fraud that was perpetrated from 2000 to 2002 to come to court was the inadequate state of the papers originally prepared by the Police.

?At the end of 2003 a number of files relating to various individuals were put to me. The only papers that suggested that there had been a crime was the case against Terrence Smith and I recommended that he be charged. The case was then fixed for trial in May 2004 but when I looked at the papers they were totally inadequate, so I decided to sit down with the Police and work out what was really needed,? he said.

?We had ten statements originally and ended up with 47 witnesses. It?s not that the Police had not done their job, but without any criticism of the Police Department, the papers we had were really inadequate to present a proper case.?

The hard work that was put in in the run up to the trial was a credit to all involved, he said, as they successfully completed the ?monumental task? of collating vast amounts of documentary evidence in a way that the jury understood.

?Fortunately the Police gave me officers to help. Although I didn?t have a Crown counsel to assist me I had the full support of the Commissioner of Police. Without that support, I can assure you that we would never have achieved the success in this case,? he said.

Mrs Graham Allen (pictured) did not return calls for comment.