The founder of the church where former financier Mr Finbarr Ross is an ordained minister is ready to testify in his favour if he is tried in Northern Ireland.

The Rev Carol Parrish said that Mr Ross would be given credentials by the Light of Christ Community Church if he wanted to continue his ministry in jail in Northern Ireland.

Mr Ross was transferred from an Oklahoma jail to a federal detention centre near Washington DC last Tuesday where he is awaiting extradition to Northern Ireland on fraud charges arising out of the failure of his International Investments Ltd in 1984.

Federal marshal Mr John Clark said yesterday that Mr Ross was in good health but he would not reveal when RUC officers will arrive to take him back to Northern Ireland.

However, Mr Joe Rice, the Belfast solicitor acting for Mr Ross, said last night he believed his client would be arriving in Belfast today and would be brought before a court tomorrow. A bail application is expected to be made.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Ms Parrish, who founded the Light of Christ Community Church, and counselled Mr Ross in jail, told The Irish Times that he has had "a hard, long 14 months since March last year. Basically he has resolved that it is time to clear this up in his life, however it goes and whatever it takes."

Asked if she would be ready to testify on his behalf, Ms Parrish said: "I can testify to the truth of what he did when he was with us as a student, an employee and as a minister and I would be willing to do that and more than that."

Asked if Mr Ross changed during his time in jail, Ms Parrish said that he had "matured". She said that "in every way it seemed that he made peace and reconciled his past with his present. He had to be pulled out of his everyday life and put in a place where he could review and contemplate whatever had happened earlier in his life."

If Mr Ross, who faces 41 charges of fraud, were to be found guilty, would that change her attitude towards him?

Pointing out that the church has "not disciplined" Mr Ross, Ms Parrish said that this would not change her attitude. "I've already accepted in myself that he did mishandle things and so part of Christian belief is that people err and that people need to make amends and that people need to pick up the pieces and go on. So my attitude is, I believe that as a young man he certainly erred and that now he is called to reckon for it.

"I don't have the pain that the people who lost funds are feeling. I am empathetic with them but I am outside of that picture."

Asked if she would have allowed his ordination as a minister, if she had known of the problems with his investment company, Ms Parrish said that "I probably would have encouraged him to have gotten legal help early and to ask what was the process for clearing it up. I would have pursued that with him prior to ordination."

Ms Parrish said that she believes that Mr Ross genuinely believed that his financial troubles were in the past because he was a US citizen and there is a statute of limitations for those kind of offences. When he was arrested in her office, he said: "Carol, I thought this was over with."

She and the church hope that Mr Ross "will correspond with us and keep us informed. We would like to be friends and support-persons to him in ways that are permissible," she said.