Thousands of Dollars Reported Missing from Belize Post Office

Twenty thousand dollars and counting…an internal audit of public funds at the Post Office in Belize City is currently ongoing. So far it is known that between January second and May nineteenth of this year, an employee of the Express Mail Service Section managed to misappropriate over twenty thousand dollars in a period of four and a half months. That’s the news coming out of the Post Office tonight which says it will continue to dig deeper into their books. The theft was detected last Tuesday, by the Express Mail Supervisor along with Deputy Post Master General James Gabriel.  They suspect a cashier of the Post Office is responsible for the missing monies. But even as they call her out, we were unable to reach her for comments. The former employee was working with the Post Office for three years, including a period of two years as a cashier at the EMS Unit. Gabriel spoke of the rather uncomplicated way in which the monies were stolen.

James Gabriel, Deputy Post Master General

“I can report that on Tuesday, our Express Mail Supervisor got a hint that there could have been some sort of misappropriation of government funds from the EMS section, the Express Mail Service Section. She got that hint on Tuesday, the nineteenth of May, and so what we did for the next two days was to do a thorough check of the records to verify what was hinted and after the first two days, it was discovered that there was indeed misappropriation of government funds to the extent of twenty thousand dollars.”

James Gabriel

Duane Moody

“Could you even tell us how she misappropriated these funds?”

James Gabriel

“What happen, the system at the Post Office is such that we do have several cashiers within the Post office and at the end of the day, they are responsible to pay the day’s sales to the main cashier. And so what happened, once the day’s transactions would have been completed, the cash book is drawn up, receipts are checked. The cashier is then responsible to walk over to the main cashier and make that deposit. What Miss Dougal did was walk over to the main cashier, but instead of making the entire deposit of say five hundred dollars, she would deposit three hundred with the main cashier and then siphon off two hundred.”

Duane Moody

“For how long was this ongoing with this person?”

James Gabriel

“So far we have checked out records starting from January first to May nineteenth and what has been discovered is that over twenty thousand dollars has been misappropriated. As I mentioned, we continue to do our internal audit because we believe that the audit will certainly reveal that there is more to it than just that.”

Duane Moody

“Sir, how long has that person, Misses Anthony; I believe that’s what you said. How long has she been employed with the Post Office and is it possible that it was happening long before January?”

James Gabriel

“Misses Anthony has been with the department for three years, for approximately three years. She has been with that section though for I would say in excess of two years. So that would mean that we have two years of records to go through. It will take some time, but certainly we will get to the bottom of it. We certainly will.”