And in news of white-collar crime, a pair of clerks from the Ministry of Labour, Local Government, and Rural Development were arrested and charged over the weekend with 15 counts of theft after they were reported by their Financial Officer.
Now, reports sourced from an FIU audit report are that over a period of 3 months, being the period from early March 2020 to July 13th, 2020, the clerks allegedly used the SmartStream system to misappropriate a total of $35,787.56 in government funds.
They did so by depositing the monies into several bank accounts, including their own. And this morning ACP police Joseph Myvette told us that while the racket may be over for these two, others at their ministry are still under investigation.
ACP Joseph Myvette - Head NCIB
"Over the weekend police arrested and charged two persons, namely Imani Sanchez, 29 years clerk and Steve Murray, 22 years second class Clerk, both formerly of the Ministry of Labour and Local Government. This is as a result of an ongoing investigation, an audit that was conducted on the labor department where those persons were found to have misappropriated somewhere in the vicinity of $35,600.00BZD during several transactions, and apparently, those transactions were that those monies were designated for other persons and included works done and then those monies were transferred to the accounts of different persons, it is still an ongoing investigation and we expect that others will be charged. They would both submit these documents and then their signature would be on them for the C.E.O. and someone else to have approved."
Cherisse Halsall:
"Would their finance officer be under investigation in this case?"
ACP Joseph Myvette - Head NCIB
"Well it is an ongoing process."
Thus far Murray has repaid $13,643.78 which was part of the $17,893.78bcy which he had received from Emany Sanchez. Another $4,250.00bcy was frozen from an account belonging to Murray.
