Eco entrepreneur 'not guilty' of work permit fraud

Wednesday 25 October 2017

A local environmentalist accused of leading an American scientist and his young family to sell their home and travel 4,000 miles across the Atlantic without the relevant employment permissions has been cleared of involvement in an alleged work permit fraud.

Glyn Gordon Mitchell (48) was claimed to have knowingly handed in the wrong form at Social Security in a bid to gain an ‘essential employee’ registration card, which would give his new employee Zach Wright - one of just four soil biology experts in the world - the rights to live, work and lease certain properties on the island.

He was found ‘not guilty’ by Relief Magistrate Sarah Fitz.

The verdict came following a two-day Magistrate’s Court trial in which Mr Wright’s wife broke down in tears as she described the “deceit” she’d allegedly lived at the hands of the defendant.

Giving evidence via video link from Omaha, Nebraska, the Wrights explained how they had only found out that they would have to travel to Jersey as ‘tourists’ days before making the transatlantic trip, while their belongings lay in pallets outside their house ready to be freighted because Mr Mitchell had not secured an ‘essential employee’ licence for Mr Wright.

She alleged that Mr Mitchell had forced the family to keep a low profile on the island after arriving - even involving registering their dog, Lola, in his name - to such an extent that their new neighbours questioned whether they were in witness protection.

Pictured: Mr Mitchell was alleged to have falsely obtained an 'essential employee' licence for an American biologist by knowingly handing in incorrect paperwork at the Social Security office.

Yesterday, the Prosecution - led by legal adviser Susie Sharpe, who was accompanied by Population Office Compliance Officer and former policeman Richard Parker - painted a picture of an “overbearing” man who was desperate for the right expertise to make his agricultural business Promessa Soil work at any cost. She said that he consistently offered “words of comfort” to the family in Skype conversations and “kept the nature of the difficulties [he] was facing” with getting an ‘essential employee’ licence hidden from them.

“There was no room for Mr Wright to have a change of heart because your business depended on him being in Jersey,” she said.

Such claims were disputed by Mr Mitchell during his cross-examination. “I was called a lot of things yesterday that I didn’t recognise about myself,” he said. Advocate Mike Preston dismissed the claims as “scurrilous allegations” and “background noise”, claiming that Mrs Wright in particular was “bitter” that what was initially an exciting prospect “turned into a nightmare.” “And she blames Mr Mitchell for that,” he said.

Moreover, he urged the court to remember that the charge related to the events of November 2015, when Mr Mitchell attended the Social Security office.

Pictured: The case was heard in the Magistrate's Court.

Ms Sharpe argued that Mr Mitchell’s failure to gain the licence he wanted led him to take a “gamble” by knowingly submitting a form for a ‘licensed’ employee at Social Security rather than a ‘registered’ one, for which he had been given permission following an appeal to a Ministerial group. His apparently intentional error, she said, wasn’t flagged up by the Population Office system until he submitted a manpower return later in the year - “one gamble too far.”

Giving evidence, Mr Mitchell said that he had been emailed the form - a ‘template letter’ - by a civil servant and “just trusted authority” by completing it. “I don’t understand how these things work… I work in a field most days.”

But Ms Sharpe argued that, as no forms are needed for gaining a registration card for ‘registered’ workers, the fact he had one showed that he must have specifically requested it with the intention of falsely obtaining the card.

Pictured: Unable to continue his business after Mr Wright returned to the US, the Court heard how Mr Mitchell engaged in a charity project to help farmers grow produce without chemicals.

Advocate Preston, however, drew attention to the fact that Mr Mitchell also submitted his original business licence at the same time, which said that Mr Wright was only entitled to a ‘registered’ permission. “If he’d been trying to deceive anyone with that template letter, there’s literally nothing worse he could have done than hand over the business licence,” he commented.

In any case, Mr Mitchell claimed that whether Mr Wright was viewed as an ‘essential employee’ or not would not have made any difference to the functioning of Promessa Soil.

The Wright family moved back to the US in May 2016 after being evicted from their home that January after the Population Office discovered the anomaly in their paperwork. Since then, Mr Mitchell explained that his business had been stalled, and that he had instead undertaken voluntary work helping farmers to grow crops without using fertiliser and chemicals. Advocate Preston explained that such a character is not someone likely to have committed the alleged offence.

After under half an hour of deliberation, Relief Magistrate Sarah Fitz found Mr Mitchell ‘not guilty’. “It’s clear that mistakes were made and some ignorance of the law and lack of care,” she said, adding that the paperwork submitted at Social Security - namely, his business licence - “points to this very much being an error.”

Mr Mitchell shook Advocate Preston’s hand upon hearing the news.