A handwriting expert told a jury there is “very strong evidence” that signatures on payment certificates at the heart of a fraud trial were penned by the accused man.Kyril Burrows, a former buildings supervisor at the Ministry of Works and Engineering, is accused along with his wife Delcina Bean-Burrows of defrauding Government of more than $553,000.Part of the crime, prosecutors allege, involved Mr Burrows getting builders paid with public money for work done on their private home at Turkey Hill, St George’s.He is accused of signing payment certificates for contractors on behalf of the Ministry of Works and Engineering, making it look like the builders had been working on Government buildings instead.The builders have told the jury they never worked on those buildings.Mr Burrows is also alleged to have signed payment certificates channelling money to his wife’s company, Ren Tech, which existed only on paper.The payments stated the company installed safety hoardings at Government schools ahead of Hurricane Florence in 2006. Witnesses from the schools have told the jury no such hoardings were installed.Further payments were made to Ren Tech in relation to allegedly false claims that it supplied layout drawings of schools to Government.Yesterday, British forensic document examiner Kim Hughes, who specialises in handwriting analysis, was called as an expert witness by prosecutor Susan Mulligan.Mr Hughes talked the jury through dozens of payment certificates at the centre of the case, comparing the writing on them to known samples of Mr Burrows’ signature and handwriting.The samples came from documents such as Mr Burrows’ job application and his official Government signature card.Mr Hughes pointed out the distinctive way various letters of the alphabet were rendered on both sets of documents.He went through numerous payment certificates relating to the Ren Tech payments in this manner.“In my opinion that’s Mr Burrows’ handwriting,” he told the jury. Mr Hughes said he did not believe the signatures of the accused man were forged.“I think there’s very strong evidence that those signatures are genuine signatures,” he said.“Those signatures look fluently written, not like someone has carefully tried to draw Mr Burrows’ signature.”He said he recognised Mr Burrows’ writing on dozens of payment certificates for his wife’s company Theravisions too.According to Ms Mulligan, Theravisions only supplied “a small portion” of the goods it was paid by Government for.Mr Hughes said he recognised Mr Burrows’ signature on a large number of payment certificates for J&M Construction and AD&T Excavating, which did the work on his home at Turkey Hill.Mr Hughes said he analysed in the region of 60 or 70 payments to J&M Construction and decided the certificates were signed by Mr Burrows.Ms Mulligan also showed Mr Hughes a handwritten receipt from the M&M International electronics store dating from December 2005.Mr Burrows is alleged to have purchased TVs for his private home from that store on the Government dollar.“It’s difficult to tell with this writing. It’s not as fluent as the writing on the payment certificate,” said Mr Hughes. “It’s difficult to say whether it’s one person who’s not a particularly good writer or disguised handwriting.He could not say that the writing belonged to Mr Burrows.When Ms Mulligan showed him another M&M receipt dating from December 2006, and asked about the signature in the customer signature box, he replied that it could not be linked to Mr Burrows.“It’s hard to say, if he’s trying to disguise his signature, that he couldn’t produce something like that, but the evidence regarding that is inconclusive,” he said.Mr and Mrs Burrows did not have any questions for Mr Hughes.They deny 35 charges spanning the period January 2005 to December 31, alleging crimes of cheating, obtaining money transfers by deception, obtaining property by deception, money laundering and false accounting. The case continues.