A Bermudian man accused of laundering a record-breaking $1.7 million in dirty money in St Vincent told a court the cash was his personal savings.Winston Robinson, 69, told the Serious Offences Court he earned the money working in the hotel and fishing industry. The cash, in US currency, was stashed in 88 packets in the yacht Jo-Tobin.Mr Robinson has been in custody since his arrest in April, 2008, when police found him and the money aboard the yacht.Prosecutors allege he and another man sailed the yacht from Bermuda to St Vincent and the Grenadines. According to The Searchlight newspaper in St Vincent, the cash bust is the largest in the history of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.Mr Robinson's trial began in August along with two other men accused in the case; Trinidadian Kent Andrews and Antonio (Que Pasa) Gellizeau, of St Vincent.Prosecutors say Mr Gellizeau owned the Jo-Tobin and Mr Robinson sailed it from St Lucia to Bermuda. Mr Robinson and Mr Andrews are later said to have sailed the yacht from Bermuda to Bequia in the Grenadines, where Mr Gellizeau was on board another of his vessels, the Orion.Police detained the Jo-Tobin on April 5, 2008, searched the vessel, and found the money concealed close to the water tanks. Mr Robinson and Mr Andrews are charged with concealing the cash on the yacht while knowing or suspecting it represented another person's proceeds of criminal conduct. Mr Gellizeau faces similar charges.According to the Searchlight, Mr Robinson took the witness stand last week and said the $1.7 million belonged to him from his work in hotels and fishing. He said that back in 2008, he stashed his money in plastic bags, then placed it in a metallic tank on the boat and sealed it with styrofoam.“I did it that way because we were going sailing and people may try to hijack your boat,” he explained.Quizzed by prosecutor Gilbert Peterson over how he accumulated the money, Mr Robinson, of Sandys, replied: “I worked for it in my country.” He went on to say he had been saving it since the 1980s.He told the court he had no investments in stock and business ventures and owned no real estate.He testified that in 2008, he flew to St Lucia via the UK to collect the Jo-Tobin and to deliver it to Swansea, Wales, for his long-time friend Nicholas Stewart. He said he picked up Mr Andrews before he set out from St Lucia and offered to pay him $500 U per week while on board. Both of them sailed back to Bermuda, then travelled to Bequia.It was in the waters off Bequia that police and coastguard officials raided the yacht where, according to Mr Robinson, he had stopped to pick up another crew member named Nolly Jack.He told the court he anchored in Bequia at about 8pm and decided that he would stay on board and clear Customs and Immigration the following day. However a party of officers from the Narcotics, Financial Intelligence and Coastguard units raided the yacht in the early hours of the following morning and found the cash.Mr Gellizeau was also anchored in Bequia on Orion. That boat was also searched but nothing was found and Mr Gellizeau was released.Mr Robinson said Mr Stewart hired him to captain the yacht, and that he knew him from their time in the British armed forces in the 1960s.“Let me put it to you that you are making up your evidence. You are not speaking the truth,” Mr Peterson put to Mr Robinson.Mr Robinson replied: “That is your problem.”When the prosecutor pointed to a police statement where Mr Robinson said the money did not belong to him and he did not know who put it there, Mr Robinson replied: “I can't remember that. I was probably lying then. I am speaking the truth now.”He told the court he met Mr Gellizeau in St Lucia, through Mr Andrews, in 2008 when the Jo-Tobin was being repaired there.However the prosecutor read from local Customs records that showed Mr Robinson, Mr Andrews, a man named Walter Sergeant and Mr Gellizeau were on board a yacht called Orion, back in 2006.“2006 was a long time. I don't know Gellizeau very well,” Robinson declared. Neither of the other two defendants in the matter took the stand. Chief Magistrate Sonya Young will deliver her verdict in the case on March 9.