The mystery of how self-professed doctor Reinaldo Silvestre got to practice and live in Belize continues to widen. Tonight, 7 News has obtained evidence showing that this international fugitive, one of the most notorious and widely publicized medical hacks in the world, was able to get security clearance from the police and slip seamlessly into Belize's medical systems. Tonight, the chairman of the Belize Medical Council which gave Silvestre the a provisional license in June of 2001 to work at the KHMH for a year, explains that the system was simply duped by a professional:
Alfonso Noble Reporting
Here they are, the clean Police report, Belizean permanent residency card, diplomas - complete with seal - from a Cuban Medical school, issued in the name of Reinaldo Castaneda Manzini Those are the legitimate documents the medical imposter known to US authorities as Reinaldo Silvestre used to perpetrate a fraud on the Belize Medical Council
Dr. Carl Meggs - Chairman Belize Medical Council
"We have all these documents from this doctor that are authentic in our side. The bodies that were supposed to check them, the seals are in order, the seals from the school that he went to the government evidence that verified these documents in other countries is there. We have no reason to question this man's ability as a medical practitioner which we did not."
But the Medical council did resist giving him a license to work as a surgeon. But then, confused with the names which he would abridge from Reinaldo de la Concepcion Silvestre Castaneda to just Reinaldo Castaneda, the Council famously gave him a provisional permit to work as a General practitioner at the KHMH in June 2001.
Carl Meggs
"At that point he was granted a one year provisional registration. I need to explain. A provisional registration is granted to a doctor or an intern to work in a particular institution. At that point in the institution he is supervised. He is not granted a registration to work. This document is not giving you carte blanche to work. Thus he did have the provisional registration."
"Now we went from someone who started out with 1,2,3,4,5,6 names to someone who has two names and one of the last names is not even a Latin name. We wouldn't have known that. There's nothing here that the medical council need to feel ashamed of that our documents are not in order. We stand, and I speak for the medical council, we stand for this. Right now on national T.V. I challenge every doctor, everybody in this country, the ministry of health, all of them. If you are going to hire a doctor in this country and a doctor does not bring a letter to you that go to the registrar. A doctor needs to bring this piece of paper."
That is a certificate of registration, what Meggs says is the only truly legitimate paper for certifying a doctor's credentials. But Dr. Silvestre never needed this and many medical practitioners do not use it, this letter just like the one Meggs sent to the KHMH is enough to start practicing. And that's just what this dubious self professed doctor used to get into the system, and later to convince the Prime Minister to support him in a letter to Meggs asking why Castaneda's application was pending:
Carl Meggs
"I answered the letter and was sent 16th of July to the Honorable Said Musa Prime Minister of Belize reference the fact that yes this gentleman, his application is with the medical council but when I got the letter now I didn't know who the prime minister was talking about because now this man was Manzini. Now this man was of a different last name all together. But because I had to report, give a report, I went and I pulled all the documents from all my files and this is how even me realized that this was one and the same person. Nothing to be ashamed of. The man is a professional."
A professional con man, not a doctor, and one who Meggs concedes could pull this again:
Carl Meggs
"I'm sure it can happen again. He is a professional. He owns a clinic in Miami. He works in Guatemala. He works in Mexico. Come on these people have bodies that are set up far surpassing anything that we have in Belize. And if he can slip past them obviously he can slip past us."
Jules Vasquez
"Is there anyway really that we could have stopped him?"
Carl Meggs
"I don't see how. I really don't see how. We don't have the mechanisms in place. I don't see how."
As Meggs explained the Belize Medical Council, whose job it is to regulate the medical profession in Belize, has no permanent staff, secretariat or collection of records. Presently there are 42 doctors working at the KHMH; 13 are Belizean and the rest are form Cuba, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Guyana and other countries. Because of a difference in skill level, the number of Cubans have been scaled back considerable over the years, from 18 last year to only 3 this year.