$218,094 in salary advances and $30,217 in bounced cheques. That's how much past Mayor David Fonseca received from the City Council without paying it back and tonight 7NEWS has the documents to prove it. The money that Fonseca owes is divided into two amounts. Salary advances he received dating back to January of 2002 and a series of 12 bounced cheques dating back to October 13 of 2005.
Tonight, we'll look at the bounced cheques. This is a group of one dozen rubber cheques made out to a Belize Bank account in Fonseca's proper name, William Fonseca. He wrote those checks out to the City Council, then made the city's cashier cash it, and then left with the cash, leaving the council with the worthless check. These cheques bounced, a point which must have been brought to the mayor's attention but the practice continued unabated and worst of all, the money was not repaid.
The most glaring example of abuse was on February 28, 2006, the day before municipal elections when Fonseca made out one more of those rubber cheques to the Council. This cheque was for $4,000. He did this knowing that whether the PUP won or lost, he would not be in office on March second. But Fonseca did it nonetheless, except this time he didn't cash the cheque at the City Hall cashier; he sent it instead to the Traffic Department and cashed it there.
That cheque also bounced, and on March the third, just in time to greet the new council, the Alliance Bank informed city hall that the cheque, like 11 others before it, had bounced. Those others are made out to various amounts: $2,000, $2,800, $2,600...and other smaller figures.
But in February of 2006 alone, Fonseca's last month in office, there were $12,940 paid to him in exchange for 4 bounced checks, most notably a $5,000 cheque on 7th February, and that $4,000 cheque the day before election.
Again, these bounced cheques are only a part of the story, a fraction of the fleecing so to speak. Tomorrow we'll break down the $236,000 in salary advances paid to Fonseca dating back to January of 2002 and continuing to January of 2006, two months before Fonseca would leave office. In January of 2006 he received payments amounting to $31,500, 85% of his annual salary in just two cheques.
Today Fonseca went to City Hall to meet with his successor, Zenaida Moya to discuss the outstanding money. That meeting finished at 5:00 pm, and we were unable to reach the mayor to find out how it concluded.
