Francis Fonseca/new U.H.S. owners deny knowing how debts were paid

The fallout over the ten million U.S. dollars from Venezuela that the public never knew about continued today with another member of the People’s United Party distancing himself from the deal. In an eight point press release by Francis Fonseca today, the candidate for P.U.P. leadership maintained that he found out about the additional money and how it was used, the same way everybody else did, in Said Musa’s televised address. Fonseca went on to reiterate that he “does not support any unauthorized or secret use of any portion of the Venezuelan grant to the people of Belize for any other purpose other than that which was agreed to between the two governments”.

Echoing Fonseca’s ignorance of how the Universal Health Services debts were settled was Dr. Muthugounder Venugopal of Belize Healthcare Partners. According to Dr. Vinny, he was never aware that the transaction involved Venezuelan money. As to the question of who owns the facility, Vinny would only say that the Healthcare Trust owns forty-nine percent while he and Dr. Keith Miel, formally of Loma Luz, own the remaining fifty-one. The Belize Healthcare Partners representative declined to answer further questions, saying that his investment group has planned a press conference for Wednesday morning to discuss the latest revelations. On Wednesday night, former Prime Minister Said Musa admitted that the Venezuelan grant to Belize was in fact twenty million U.S. dollars, ten of which were used for housing loans and a new track for the national stadium while the other ten was secretly combined with other monies to pay off the U.H.S. debts at the Belize Bank. Prime Minister Dean Barrow has referred to the transaction has reprehensible and a thorough investigation is being carried out in Belize, Venezuela and in the Turks and Caicos to determine if members of the Musa administration were legally wrong in their actions.