Joanne Marie Jones (49) denies four charges of concealing and converting the proceeds of crime.
Her trial before Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith and Jurats Jerry Ramsden and Pamela Pitman is in its second week in the Royal Court.
Forensic accountant David Winch said that ‘if you take her assertions at face value’, the amount of money Ms Jones claims to have earned on the side – through activities such as buying and selling scrap metal, jewellery, sea bass and lobster and various inheritances from her family, building work and occasional bar-tending, as well as working at her deckchair concession at St Brelade’s beach – roughly added up.
He said this could be a coincidence, or she knew what amount she would have to account for, or she might be ‘telling the truth’.
‘I can’t tell you which of those three, or whether a bit of all of them, is the reason, but it does come very close,’ Mr Winch said.
The accountant was asked by the defence to look at Ms Jones’s explanations for accumulating some £900,000 in assets between 2011 and 2016 while working low-paid jobs to counter evidence given by the forensic accountant for the Crown, David Sowden.
The court also heard from a man who worked with Ms Jones at her beach concession, SunnySide Chairs.
Declan Corvan said the business did well, as it was the ‘nicest one’ on the beach and had ‘the softest sand’.
‘She was a really good manager,’ he said of Ms Jones. ‘She was quite hard-working and always made us work hard as well. She would be back and forth, back and forth all day.’
The payments were generally made in English notes, he added, as they came from tourists.
He told the court Ms Jones would take the cash from takings as part of her salary.
This was common, he told the court, saying: ‘It was her beer money, or what have you.’
The trial continues.
