"The BDF needs its food" - that's how a former Commanding Officer for The Army's Services and Support Battalion explained the practice of batch invoicing.
That's the practice we've been exposing for weeks where a cascade of invoices for under 10,000 dollars would all be processed on one day. We have reviewed almost 2,000 leaked invoice screenshots from the Ministry of Defence - paid out to 10 entities - and 96% of them were under $10,000 dollars, which means they didn't have to go to the Treasury Department for approval.
That has the pattern of suspicious transaction but according to the man who once dealt with those supplies - it's actually a practice built out of necessity:
Jules Vasquez
"We're looking at a cascade of thousands of invoices under 10,000. From your experience, why does this happen?"
BDF Whistleblower, Ex-Commanding Officer - Services and Support Battalion
"Well, this happened simply because the BDF needs its food, and the government takes a long while to pay these vendors for the items that we need."
"As a former commanding officer for the services and support battalion, I am fully aware that this has been a practice for some time now."
"Now, we would ensure that it is below the 10,000 because you need to understand that most of these vendors would have already gotten a tender, um, approval, which is basically a contract to, uh, provide a particular item for the Belize Defense Force."
"Now, if they go through the process of getting payment for the entire month for the amount of items that they provide to the BDF, the process takes extremely long before they get their money from the government of Belize."
"So by getting or doing it in portions of under 10,000, we could get our items much quicker."
Jules Vasquez
"Because if they wait to get paid a bulk payment in contract, maybe they get paid 100,000."
BDF Whistleblower
"Yes".
Jules Vasquez
"A portion of the value of the contract, it will take months. Yes. And while that is happening, the supplier becomes impatient, maybe run out of cash flow."
BDF Whistleblower
"That is correct."
Jules Vasquez
"That is- And when that happens, what happens to the supplies?"
BDF Whistleblower
"When that happens, we don't have no supplies on our shelf. That's when you would probably get your inside scoop from soldiers, officers who would tell you, "Guess what? They're eating just bread," or, "They're eating just noodles," or, "They're just eating rice," or whatever the case might be because, um, suppliers would stop sending in their items."
"This practice you would see clearly much when it comes to the end of the, um, financial year."
"Uh, when you see January, February approaching, you will find out that in the BDF stores, you won't find much items in the stores because by then everyone... The money is, is either finished or they're waiting, suppliers are waiting to be paid before they provide their new set of items before the, um, financial year comes to an end."
"And, uh, and that's pretty much how it has been for some time now."
Jules Vasquez
"So have you ever seen situation where the, where the stores, the shelf, they're empty and there's nothing to eat?"
BDF Whistleblower
"A number of times. Um, a number of times as a, um, commanding officer, I mean, member of the BDF, we need... we would have to go and approach the same vendors and pretty much be begging them to, um, provide us with the item, assuring them that we would, um, ensure that they get their payment within a certain time span."
