A man accused of conspiring to assist his father to commit Bermuda status fraud did not submit false documents in his own status application, a Crown witness admitted under cross examination in the Supreme Court yesterday.

In the witness box for the second straight day in the trial of Robert William Martyn, fraud analyst from the Registrar General department in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Karen Ann Lefave said under questioning from defence lawyer Saul Froomkin QC that all the information contained in the defendant?s own application for status in September, 2000 accurately corresponded with their records.

Mr. Martyn, 42, of Harrington Sound Road in Smith?s, was born in Canada and is accused of dishonestly assisting his father, William Robert Martyn, in his Bermuda status application in September, 2000, and thereby validating his own status application at the same time.

This was done, the Crown maintains, by providing the Department of Immigration with allegedly false copies of the father?s birth certificate and the marriage certificate of the grandfather ? William Walter Martyn ? which show that the grandfather was born in Bermuda in 1899.

On Tuesday, Ms Lefave said that both documents ? submitted as part of the father?s status application and not the defendant?s as previously reported ? were not genuine and had not been issued by her department.

Separate, certified copies of the documents from the Ontario Registrar General?s department were shown to the court which stated, unlike the allegedly fraudulent documents, that the grandfather was born in England and not Bermuda.

The Crown is maintaining that this detail was altered by the defendant and his father because the father?s application for Bermuda status ? and by extension the defendant?s ? would be turned down if the grandfather had not been born in Bermuda.

The defence, led by Mr. Froomkin and supported by Victoria Pearman, has argued that their client acted in good faith when assisting his father?s status application, and was not aware that the documents submitted as part of that application were of questionable authenticity.

Mr. Froomkin also managed to get Ms LeFave to admit that a person who was not familiar with the format and security features of documents from the Registrar General?s office would ?probably not? be able to identify whether they were genuine or false just by looking at them.

Late in the afternoon, meanwhile, former Department of Immigration Acting Status Officer Marita Grimes took the stand to describe how she had handled the defendant?s own status application in early 2001.

Ms Grimes said she had harboured concerns over the details contained in the father?s declaration of domicile ? included in the son?s application ? and had submitted a summary of those to the Chief Immigration Officer.

The father?s declaration of domicile was crucial to his son?s status application because it always has to be proved that a parent with Bermudian status was domiciled in Bermuda at the time of their child?s birth in order for that child to be entitled in status.

Dr. Brewer ultimately overruled her concerns, Ms Grimes revealed, and sanctioned the status application ? a decision he later regretted after the two allegedly false documents submitted as part of the father?s status application came to light.