5 staffers implicated, 1 terminated

An external audit of the funds of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association (BSCFA) unearthed the embezzlement of over $78,000 from the Salaries section of the association’s accounts.

Today, Amandala spoke with Alfredo Ortega, the Vice Chairman of the BSCFA’s Committee of Management, and he told us that one employee has been terminated and five others are under scrutiny in relation to the incident.

According to Ortega, the five suspected employees devised a scheme which allowed them to receive extra money each time they were paid through the online payroll system.

He said, “Through the course of time, the association has not been doing external audits, but for the past two years, we have been able to conduct external audits. This year, we got the services of auditor Mark Hulse, and the audit found out that there was a situation with regards to the salary being channeled through the online payments.

“He [the auditor] presented it to the accountant, and then to the senior accountant and the CEO [Chief Executive officer], and we called a meeting based on the irregularities in that section. What we did is to demand a thorough investigation for all the banking institutions through which online payments have been channeled.”

Ortega explained that the contract to conduct the investigation was thereafter given to the same company which did the external audit – Mark Hulse and Co. Ltd., and when the investigation was completed and the results were sent to them, they learned that “$78,600 was channeled to 4 or 5 different staff members.”

“I cannot state their names because that information will be presented to the farmers at a meeting”, Ortega said. “But we have not yet proceeded with a court case against these people because they have come forward and said that they will be paying back those funds to the association in a period of 3 months,” he added.

Ortega told us that the alleged mastermind of the embezzlement has been terminated, while the fate of the others will depend on the advice of their (the BSCFA’s) lawyer.

“We have discharged the person who was in charge of online payments because she was the one that orchestrated all the panorama. Based on the advice of our lawyer, and the Labor Department, we took a decision to dismiss her,” he stated.

Ortega said that there have now been some changes in the handling of the association’s accounts, and they have stepped up vigilance in their monitoring of their financial records so that “a reoccurrence of that magnitude cannot happen again.”