“In a state of shock”- that’s how one former member of the Said Musa Cabinet who wished to remain anonymous described the PUP’s upper echelon after the revelation of a letter which says that the Venezuelan grant was US$20 million, not US$10 million as previously announced. Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dean Barrow has asked his predecessor Said Musa or former Housing Minister Ralph Fonseca to offer some explanation, but they have not. When we contacted his office, Musa was again unavailable for comment today.
But what we did get was a remarkably mute press release from the PUP Secretariat which doesn’t offer much in the way of new information. In fact, it simply repeats what everybody already knows: which is what the Central Bank Governor told us yesterday: that US$10 million in grant funds were transferred to the bank on December 28th. But it doesn’t say anything about questions concerning the other US$10 million – which the Vice President of Venezuela’s Bank for Economic Development, Luis Arias Bellorin raised in a letter on February 8th. And, this is the critical part: it does not make any denial of the US$20 million allegation. In fact it hardly addresses that question, saying only that the new government should not play political games with the bilateral relationship it enjoys with Venezuela.
So anyone waiting for a flat out denial of the existence of any other ten million us dollars, or an explanation or accounting won’t get it – at least not from the PUP. But Financial Secretary Joe Waight hopes that he will get it, and from the Venezuelans – possibly as early as tomorrow. As we reported, he has written to them asking for wire records and other details of the outstanding $10 million. The Venezuelan Ambassador whom we contacted last week Friday was also unavailable – and his office told us today that he is in Venezuela. Last week they told us that he was in Belize City.
