Jason Flowers Wanted in Alleged Immigration Receipt Scam  

Former immigration employee Jason Flowers remains on the run tonight, as investigators dig deeper into missing funds at the Belize City Immigration Office. More than one hundred and sixty thousand dollars is reportedly unaccounted for, and Flowers has been identified as a key figure in the ongoing investigation. Authorities allege he cancelled numerous receipts and pocketed the payments. Today, Immigration Minister Kareem Musa told reporters that the Auditor General’s Office has now launched an audit to determine just how far the alleged fraud goes.

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Immigration

“The investigation has completed, at least the initial phase of it from an internal standpoint, meaning in the Ministry of Immigration, our finance officer has given a statement to police and that tis what prompted police to issue a wanted poster for Mr. Flowers. We have received information that he is in the U.S. Mr. Flowers has been dismissed from his work as an immigration cashier. So, he is no longer in the employment of the government of Belize. We have enough information to charge him for some of the cancelled, reversed invoices. But in terms of the entire scope of the scheme we was operating, we have requested the Auditor General to come in and do a proper audit. We want to get it right out of the gate. So that will give us a full scope of it. I can confirm that the auditor general’s office is already at the ministry carrying out the investigation. At the conclusion of that we will have every invoice that was reversed by him and or others taking part in this scheme and we will be able levy all the charges at that point.”

 

The Ministry of Immigration also placed an Interpol notice for two missing nationality certificates.

 

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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