Will there be charges against council cashiers who stole over $60,000

The three employees who were detained in connection with funds stolen from City Hall were released after forty-eight hours in police custody, but the investigation goes on. And if you thought sixty grand was a lot, guess what… the projections are that the total amount of missing cash may very well jump the hundred thousand dollar mark. The confirmed figure now sits at sixty-four thousand four hundred dollars of which about sixteen thousand has been recovered. Three employees from the Revenue and Valuation Department were detained when the discrepancies were first discovered and two of them reportedly confessed to being a part of the scam that has kept much needed funds out of CitCo’s coffers. But since their release, the ongoing investigations and audit are implicating more persons and two more are expected to be charged along with the trio in the near future. The audit is also expanding its scope to prior to December 2009, which means that there can be more missing monies.

According to Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers, she and her team including Councilor Phillip Willoughby, the City Administrator, the Director of Financial Services, the Accountant and the Administrative Officer to the City Administrator confronted the suspected employees.  And the Mayor says that the council has concrete evidence as to what had transpired.  Moya Flowers is leaving the issue in police hands.

Zenaida Moya Flowers, Belize City Mayor

Zenaida Moya Flowers

“We managed to get from these individuals what transpired. They started to fess up, confess as to what had transpired. It was during that confession that we also—I directly asked them to bring in the funds that were taken. One of the individuals, he brought in ten thousand dollars. The other individual, she said she could only bring in three hundred and seventy-five dollars from I believe it was around three thousand dollars. The next individual, she brought in three thousand dollars of at the time she had said about twelve thousand dollars. But we know that It’s, according to our records, that it is in the tune of sixty-six thousand dollars that these individuals managed to get from the council.”

Jose Sanchez

“The public would want to know this can’t happen again. Are anyone’s payments or receipts missing from the records?”

Zenaida Moya Flowers

“I have spoken to the city administrator and the computer programmer is working with her.  As well as the respective managers to ensure that everything is put in place so that whatever was paid in by the residents we will know what exactly is paid in. So again there is no need for them to worry that their payments are not posted because what happened in terms of what these officers did and tampering and back dating the records, the programmer, the MIS person as well as the city administrator who has an excellent knowledge of I.T., they were able to run particular reports to see who were doing the transactions. Hence the reason we know exactly who are doing it. So even though they confessed we also could have gone ahead and checked who did it. They were able to run the test and be able to see what all transactions and records were tampered with. So we already know so residents need not worry that we won’t know that they paid. We will know exactly who paid.”

Jose Sanchez

“How much funds are left to be collected? Will they pay them back? Will charges be levied against them?”

Zenaida Moya Flowers

“It’s in the hands of the police.  I know the city administrator had already gone to file the report and she, along with her finance team, are dealing with the situation. So it’s left up to—it’s in the hands of the police really. It’s in the hand of the police.”

An internal audit is underway to determine if there are more missing monies.