Details of charge accounts of a senior Police officer accused of theft have been put before a trial jury.

Det. Ch. Insp. Stuart Crockwell is accused of stealing more than $35,000, which a court has heard was supposed to be spent carrying out construction work on a house. He denies the charge.

Two witnesses appeared in Supreme Court yesterday and outlined charge accounts in Crockwell’s name totalling thousands of dollars.

The jury heard last week how Crockwell persuaded Andrew Bascome to go into business with him, before the pair set up Bascro Construction together.

The Crown also claims that Crockwell, from Smith’s Hill, St. George’s, used $15,000 of $125,000 — that Terry Darrell had paid him for the first phase of work on her house — to cover a bounced cheque, $8,338 of it to clear a Capital G bank loan he had with his wife and $12,000 of it to pay off a credit card debt.

The Prosecution said that Crockwell, 44, had approached Mr. Bascome and told him he would help him set up a “kind of company” but did not want anything in return.

When Crockwell said he needed more money for the second phase of Ms Darrell’s house project, Mr. Bascome started making his own investigations, it has also been claimed.

Yesterday’s first witness, Michael Bierman, owner of Bierman’s Concrete, Smith’s, said the defendant was the sole signatory for a charge account set up at his company.

He told the jury the account was opened in July 1996. The court heard that a dozen charges were made to the account between January and June, 2005.

The balance in June 2005 was just over $11,000, Mr. Bierman told Crown counsel Carrington Mahoney. During cross-examination by Charles Richardson, for Crockwell, the witness said that he could not tell from the records he had with him how many charges were made by the defendant.

He added that he also did not know how many were made by Mr. Bascome, the defendant’s business partner.

The court heard Crockwell had written to Mr. Bierman to say he would be reducing the debt. Mr. Richardson put it to the witness that the current balance stood at “something like $2,000 or less”.

The witness replied that he did not have the documents to confirm that information.

The second witness was Georgia Wilson, credit manager at Gorham’s. She said Crockwell opened a charge account with them in September 1997, later applying for Mr. Bascome to be added to the account.

Mrs. Wilson said at the end of November 2004 the account balance stood at just over $12,000.

A payment of $12,973 was made on December 30 of that year, leaving the balance at $776.21, the court heard.

After she left the witness box, Mr. Mahoney told the jury that the Prosecution had finished its case. The rest of yesterday’s proceedings were dominated by legal arguments with the jury not in court.

Crockwell denies stealing $35,338, which is described in court as a general deficiency belonging to Mr. Bascome or Ms Darrell.

The Supreme Court trial, before Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves, is due to continue today.