PM Takes Responsibility in Immigration Funds Scandal

News Five has been closely following the investigation into missing funds at the Belize City Immigration Department and tonight the prime minister is taking some accountability for what went wrong. He says the buck stops with him as head of government. However, he’s also raising concerns about why department supervisors failed to detect the missing funds sooner, calling for tighter oversight and accountability.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The person that is involved was quite creative in cancelling receipts, but more than that I don’t think I can comment because the police is investigating. And I know the media is trying to make a story that well nobody is charged yet. Well, it takes a long time to investigate and make sure you have a good case, because if you don’t you know they have these good defense lawyers and they find one misstep and then you have to throw out the case. So, we need to be careful. We have to ensure when we go to court we have to have a good case.”

 

Reporter

“So this started when you were minister there. Do you believe you have to take some form of accountability?”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“I think that the elections was in 2025 in March. I don’t know when in 2025, January, February or March this happened. But at the end of the day as the prime minister I have to take responsibility for everything that takes place in government. So yes if you want to say that, I take responsibility. At the end of the day, it is my responsibility as prime minister. But what is even more important is to learn from these errors. We put so much in place and so much checks and balances. But if we are not checking the checks and balances then this happens. They have a supervisor and the supervisor should be checking every day and if the supervisor was checking and saying hold on, why does this person have so much cancelled receipts. That alone should be a red light. The Prime Minister says moving services online will help better track transactions and improve oversight.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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