Barrow lambastes Musa/Fonseca over Venezuela deal

Since the middle of 2004 Belizeans have watched a series of events unfold that can only be described as scandalous. They involved financial improprieties associated with publicly owned institutions like the Social Security Board and Development Finance Corporation and stained the reputations of government officials ranging all the way up to then Prime Minister Said Musa. But as bad as the stormy weather in Belmopan became the administration always seemed to be able to dodge a direct hit by any investigative lightning bolt. Today, however, that run of good luck may have ended. After two weeks of embarrassed silence, opposition leader Said Musa took to the airwaves last night to say that although he had previously told the nation that the Venezuelan government gave Belize the sum of ten million U.S. dollars for improvements to housing and sporting facilities, the real figure was twenty million. The additional ten, he admitted, went directly toward paying off the government’s debt to the Belize Bank, incurred on behalf of Universal Health Services. In a press conference today Barrow excoriated Musa and various associates for the original deception, their continuing silence and the gross impropriety of the diversion of public funds.

Said Musa, Leader of the Opposition (February 8th 2008)
“I have no fear about what will happen tomorrow in Belmopan or anywhere else for that matter. I think what was there to be leaked has been leaked …there’s nothing else.”

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
But it turns out the statement made by former Prime Minister Said Musa following his party’s defeat at the polls proved to be untrue. Following a meeting with Prime Minister Dean Barrow on Wednesday, two weeks after the issues became public, Musa took to the airwaves to admit that the Venezuelan gift was in fact double the amount initially advertised.

Said Musa
“On December the twenty-eight, 2007 the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Government of Belize entered into an economic cooperation agreement for a non-reimbursable grant—gift—of U.S. twenty million.”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“In my view and in the view of the Government, what was done by Messers Musa and Fonseca and to a lesser extent, by Amalia Mai, is absolutely reprehensible. It is highly immoral and the product of a conspiracy.”

Barrow did not mince words and at an airport press conference, lambasted his predecessor, whose only defence was no defence at all.

Said Musa
“U.S. ten million dollars was transferred from Bandes to the Belize Bank which settled G.O.B. debt obligations with the Belize Bank. Our understanding with the Venezuelan government was that only the housing/sports facility grant—the U.S. ten million dollars—received by the Central Bank was to be announced until further notice.”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Your guess is as good as mine as to whether their story is in the first place true, that the Venezuelans agreed, sort of behind closed doors that they could do with the money as they wished but the Venezuelans obviously preserved deniability for themselves, obliged them to sign the official document that spoke only about twenty million dollars and the specified purposes. Either these good gentlemen are not as bright and as sophisticated as certain one of them thinks he is or which I suppose amounts to the same thing, they’ve been had.”

Today Prime Minister Dean Barrow maintained that the Musa administration deliberately diverted more than twenty million dollars of public funds to pay off a private debt…and then lied to the nation about it.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Once that money was paid over, it was for the use of the Belize Bank. So if they turn around and they invested in a trust which then invested in turn in U.H.S., the Government and people of Belize have nothing to do with that, we have no kind of ownership. Wherever this leads, because at the end of the day it is likely to see some people in public trouble, I think we have a duty to ensure that we dot all our I’s, cross all our T’s. We have a duty to ensure that nobody is railroaded so that if after proper advice, if after proceeding in a scrupulously correct way, certain actions have to be taken, hopefully all will be convinced that there are legitimate actions impelled by the national interest as presided over by a Government who must do justice.”

Our requests for interviews with Said Musa and former Minister of Housing Ralph Fonseca went unanswered today. As for trustee Phillip Osbourne and the Belize Bank’s Phillip Johnson, they were either in meetings or out of the office. During today’s press conference, Governor of the Central Bank Sydney Campbell confirmed that only ten million U.S. dollars was sent to the Government’s account at the Central Bank but at the end of January, the Belize Bank received not ten, but twenty million U.S. dollars from their branch in the Turks and Caicos.

Sydney Campbell, Governor of the Central Bank
“There was query made at the time, now it turns out that we have to do a thorough examination of the Belize Bank with respect to this transaction.”

Janelle Chanona
“What was the response to your query?”

Sydney Campbell
“Well, that this was the money, the people who were buying U.H.S., this was the funds that the people who were buying U.H.S. had transferred to Belize.”

Janelle Chanona
“Who were those people? What was the listed …”

Sydney Campbell
“The indication was that it was the same people that we hear now have U.H.S., Belize Healthcare Partners. Now that’s what the preliminary submission to us indicates when we did our preliminary research. After I spoke to PM yesterday evening, subsequent to that we have now understood there’s more to it and we have ordered a special inspection specifically relating to this transaction and the Belize Bank.”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Belize Bank is saying to the government look remember you have this guarantee, alright, pay it. I understand it was more than twenty that was paid so there are other investigations that we will be doing, more than the twenty Belize out of Venezuela. I gathered that there were other monies sourced elsewhere that were also used to satisfy Government’s guarantee vis-à-vis U.H.S.”

In addition to the Central Bank’s investigation, Ambassador to Guatemala Fred Martinez will also head a delegation to Venezuela to meet with officials there.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“All I want is the agreement, which will confirm what Messers Musa and Fonseca have already said, that the written, legal, governing document is for twenty million to be used in a specified way and then the instructions so that I can know who took it upon himself or herself to give the Venezuelans wiring instructions to divert this money to the Turks and Caicos or to the UK. For my initial purposes, that is all I need. I would hope that the officials in Venezuela will recognise how deadly serious this is for the Government and people of Belize. I would imagine that there must a shared interest in getting to the bottom of this.”

Stewart Krohn
“What effect will this affair have on our relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“That’s hard to say in my view … in my view, we surely we are talking about two, and I choose my words carefully, two sophisticated sovereign nations. I don’t see why we can’t work this out.”

But one thing we haven’t quite been able to work out is who actually owns Universal Health Services. If the entire forty million dollars paid off the hospital’s debt, how did forty-nine percent of the shares end up in a private trust? And more importantly, who owns the remaining fifty-one percent? The one shareholder we do know about is Belize Healthcare Partners but as they maintained in January, their company never assumed any liability.

Janelle Chanona (January 8th, 2008)
“The debt just disappeared.”

Dr. Muthugounder Venugopal, Belize Healthcare Partners (January 8th, 2008)
“No it didn’t disappear, it was paid.”

Janelle Chanona
“You can’t say how or by whom?”

Dr. Muthugounder Venugopal
“No. It’s a private transaction, a transaction between Belize Bank and our group and Universal and there’s a confidentiality agreement and I hope you will respect that.”

While the mystery of the missing ten million U.S. dollars is closer to being solved tonight, it is possible that official investigations could open a Pandora’s box of financial transactions that were used to pay of the controversial U.H.S. debts.
Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona

While no one representing Said Musa or Ralph Fonseca was talking today, one member of the Peoples’ United Party who was talking was Orange Walk Central Representative Johnny Briceño. In a release from the committee supporting him for the P.U.P. leadership, Briceño condemned the use of the ten million U.S. dollars to pay off the U.H.S. debt, reminding the public that it was that very issue of using public funds to pay private debts that led him to resign from Cabinet in June of 2007. Briceño said this latest revelation only points up the need for reform of the Peoples’ United Party.

And while that statement was an obvious chance to capitalize on a bad situation for his party, it didn’t take Briceño’s words to deal a serious blow to his opponent in the race, party chairman Francis Fonseca. Fonseca, while claiming to be his own man, has consistently embraced the leadership of Said Musa and is closely identified with the previous administration’s policies.