Thousands of dollars stolen from City Hall
At news time tonight, three male and one female employee are being questioned by Criminal Investigative Branch in relation to thousands of dollars missing from City Hall. The figure is put as high as sixty thousand dollars but the exact amount is yet to be ascertained pending the outcome of an ongoing spot audit. The four are attached to the Revenue and Valuation Department but because they have not been charged, their names are being withheld. The missing monies were detected on Monday morning when City Administrator Kiran Vanjani logged into the City Hall’s financial system and found discrepancies in postings of revenues collected. The Criminal Investigative Branch was called in and at about eight last night, the four employees were detained. It is also known that the four broke down and confessed to depriving the city of thousands of dollars. Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers, who ordered the investigation, did not comment today and it was left to Councilor Phillip Willoughby to deal with the latest scam to hit City Hall. While Willoughby says that three persons are in detention, our sources report that in fact four persons are in custody.
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“I’m not certain if it was outright misappropriation. Maybe the methodology or the technique used might have been just that, but what transpired was simply this as we went on with the investigation. Again this was our own investigation that occurred before the matter was handed over to the jurisdiction of police. The process was that someone with administrative access within the IT infrastructure to give privileges to persons to do what was done, according to what was said. What was done is that one individual would backdate, back-post or maybe even remove receipts or invoices from within the system. So at the end of the day when you would print the balance, you would balance because the amount of monies that was removed or withdrawn from the register would not have shown up at the end of the day when it came to the balancing of the council’s funds.”
Duane Moody
“So how was this detected?”
Philip Willoughby
“Through the process of reporting. Reports are generated systematically by the administrator one to say that who logs in under whose name, who did what and from there we started to put the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Duane Moody
“An amount of around sixty thousand dollars was missing is anything of that true. From the investigation that you guys have done, what amount is being shown as missing?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“I can narrowly speculate to say in that ball park figure, but again we need to look back, to print and generate more reports with persons who had administrative rights to see if the exact period of commencement to now that this has occurred and in the past there were incidents that were mentioned and had occurred. It would be the front line people.”
Jules Vasquez, Channel 7
“Front line being clerks?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“Cashiers.”
Duane Moody
“I’m understanding that three persons have been detained from police particularly from the Revenues and Evaluation Department is that so?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“Accurate.”
Duane Moody
“I also understand that some monies have been recovered. Is that so?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
Accurate.
Duane Moody
“About how much would you say?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“About Thirteen thousand, three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
Duane Moody
“How was this recovered?”
Phillip Willoughby, Councillor
“With cooperation from the employees.”
The government should pass a law stating, that any government employee from prime minster down to cashiers if they are suspected of stealing should have there assets frozen pending the outcome. If you are found guilty everything you own should be taken away and given back to the people, if its house, cars… sell them and clean out their bank account. After all you are stealing from every belizean taxpayer.
How is it that when monies are discovered missing and the suspected thieves are non-politicos, the law can move so swiftly, but when monies are missing and the alleged crooks are politically affiliated, the law seems to sleep very deeply indeed. This money is chum change compared to all that was found missing after a recent audit. That report which points to hundreds of thousands missing and the mismanagement of hundreds of thousands more was handed to the PM more than 5 months ago. Yet nothing has been said and CIB has certainly not been called in, because the UDP Mayor is implicated in the hustling. Nobody is above the law. Just as these four persons were arrested so swiftly, so too should those implicated in the large-scale corruption in City Hall
What’s wrong with my Belizean People?Don’t we know how to do accounting anymore?
how come this doesn’t surprise me. yeah the same people that work at city hall runs it. meaning they are the same ones stealing.
i fully agree with mike. The last we heard of the Mayor Case is that the DPP will bring more charges against the Mayor which include the famous “underdepositing” charges. This has not been done. The PM down to the DPP has a resposibility to act now. Its because the Boss is stealing and nothing happen so the worker tries their luck now. We are dealing with two sets of laws here
These corruption scandals that have surfaced ,are just the tip of the iceberg. There needs to be more tighter internal fiscal control to avoid civil servants from looting the revenue that belongs to the People of Belize. Next audit should be The Customs Department where rampant hustling and private crooked deals are being done on a daily basis ,depriving the Government and enriching a few crooks living the high lifestyle.Get rid of those corrupt ministers and their cronies and punish those guilty to the maximum sentence allowed under law. Send a message to all civil servants that they are not above the law.
I agree with Mike. How come all the corruption in the city council went hush after so much publicity? Makes one wonder eh! I think that there should be an early election for city council or let the the people second to ones in the office in the election take over. The concil is messed up!
i concur wth above statements, what is good for the goose is good for the gander… Not matter who it is , those person should be arrested and charge. And for goodness sake have the neccessary evidence… People steal M & M and pedi lite and were sent to jail, now don’t tell me yu guys don’t have evidence. I tired of people getting away with white color crime sepcailly politician. Whay about Moya i don’t hear nothing about her… Now she wa clean up shop when she allegedly took our money to build fancy house and have fancy wedding for herself and another family member with OUR MONEY, she run gwaan get lawyer and get bail. …. Barrow yu said u would put something in the laywer that whomever theif from the people will and could be prosecuted…beware before the problems of the poor come knock on your door….
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