Tonight, the National Health Insurance program is clarifying its involvement with the Belmopan Medical Laboratory following questions surrounding the business dispute between lab co-owner Dr. Naun Bonilla and his business partner, Hannah Foreman - which police believe led to a murder plot.
NHI General Manager Dr. Ramon Figueroa told us today that while the laboratory had successfully met the requirements to become an NHI service provider in Belmopan, no contract was ever finalized due to an ownership dispute between the partners.:
Dr. Ramon Figueroa, General Manager - NHI
"In the process, we pay more attention to the clinics, because any support service to be able to provide a service needs to have an existing clinic issuing referrals. So, the Belmopan Medical Lab, as I said, we went in, evaluated the place, and met the standards, we informed them, as we informed everybody else. And then, subsequently, so we sent them, again, as we sent everybody else, a draft copy of a contract and an itemized list of what services we cover, lab services, with prices. Expecting them to either agree or disagree with what we're proposing. So, that was the situation with Ms. Forman. We had submitted, she had expressed that they were in agreement. But then we got requests from her, stating that they were going to change the
name of the company. I believe it went from the Belmopan Medical Lab to Belmopan Diagnostic Services Limited. To make the story short, when Dr. Bonilla was informed, because we knew that Dr. Bonilla was part of the company, initial company, he said that that wasn't, it wasn't something that they had agreed on. And it was something that came out of the blues for him, and he was concerned. Actually, Dr. Bonilla came here, and verbally expressed to us the problem he had had with Ms. Hannah. Not before they had expressed an interest to become part of NHI. Problems in the management, in the financials, in accountability, and so he was pursuing a legal option. And so, I expressed to him that the only way we can stop the process is if he sent us a letter, official letter, expressing his concerns and requesting that we put a hold on any dealings. We even got a letter from his lawyer, stating that there was a legal process and that it was going to be litigated in court. So we informed, I mean, we did inform both of them that we could not sign a contract with Ms. Hannah and the company, because this was a matter for the court now to resolve. They had a business dispute between the two investors. So we could not proceed with signing any contract until such time as this was resolved in court."
