Over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars embezzled from the Southern Regional Hosptial

Peter Allen

An investigation into alleged embezzlement of funds at the Southern Regional Hospital which has been ongoing since July 2013 is expected to be completed soon. Hospital Administrator Nasley Sommerville has been on suspension since October, after an audit investigation turned up serious irregularities in check cashing which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars missing. The Police, the Audit Department and the FIU are involved, and C.E.O. in the Ministry of Health Peter Allen says that the investigation is in its final stages.

Peter Allen, C.E.O., Ministry of Health

“The Southern Region is a case of what we believe on the basis of the evidence that we have seen so far I embezzlement of funds. I met last week for an update with the audit who are investigating a its substantial sum an there are many different pieces of evidence that they are collecting to see if indeed that this is the case and to see if they have all the evidence they need to proceed forward. All the evidence that t he audit team are collecting are being available to the police and the police are cooperating with the Financial Intelligence Unit. The Financial Intelligence Unit we feel has a little more expertise in this particular area. I was updated just yesterday of the officer in charge of the case in Dangriga and I have actually been trying to speak to Ms. Marilyn Williams for a couple of days and I hope to speak to her later for an update on the case. The sergeant in Dangriga told me that he is still collecting evidence; he was awaiting some more evidence from the different banks. The bank account that we hold the accounts in is the Belize Bank and they were having some trouble in finding copies of the different documents that were required. And I believe that the sergeant was trying to inquire if other banks or financial institutions to look for any deposits into those and those are the process that he on. He was assuring me that he expected to have more information by next week but just as he has suggested as well that he won’t be able to go into any details as yet just going on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty.”

According to Allen, Sommerville continues to maintain her innocence and has retained the services of an attorney. At this point it is believed that over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars were embezzled.