What’s going on at City Hall? That’s the question everyone has been asking. Well, we know that the DPP has told that by this time next week someone will be criminally charged for wrongdoing with the council’s money. But beyond the criminal investigation, as we’ve been reporting, the council has been conducting its own administrative inquiry – speaking with at least two of the three persons singled out for wrongdoing in the special audit. The third person who has not yet been interviewed is Financial Controller Dwain Davis – who has publicly taken responsibility for the practice of under-deposits. Today we asked acting Mayor Dion Leslie what they have discovered so far.
Dion Leslie, Acting Mayor
“We have not concluded the interviews as yet. We still have not interviewed one person. For some reason the interview wasn’t able to take place yesterday so we are looking to complete it next week and sometime next week we will have our directives from the council after we meet and we discuss what is the best way forward for the council.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Are you convinced at this time that there was wrongdoing within the finance department of the council?”
Dion Leslie,
“Well I am going just based on what the audit report says and the audit report does say that under deposits is not a accepted accounting principle so I am just going based on that. I won’t tell you what I personally believe but I’ll tell you what the council concludes at the end of the interviews.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Are you convinced that then the Mayor as the person responsible for the finance department, the finance portfolio in the council, the Mayor is then or was ultimately responsible for those breaches in best practices?”
Dion Leslie,
“I won’t answer that question Jules.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Would you be able to say if you feel that the council has a collective responsibility for any wrongdoing because at the end of the day, we elect you all to safeguard, manage, and best use public funds? So we elect you all as a group.”
Dion Leslie,
“I believe so and in many ways we are responsible for what happens here at the council. Like you said we are elected as a group, as a team, so whatever happens it rests on all our shoulders. So that is why we meet as a council and we will make our conclusion as a council. You won’t see any councillors coming out and saying we will do this and we will do that and we will do this and this is the action we’ll take. We will give a collective statement after we’ve met and after we’ve gone over all our notes after the hearings.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Are you able to reassure the citizens who elected you all that you all are in fact serious about following this to the very end no matter who it may implicate, no matter if it implicates your boss as the case may be, your elected leader? Are you all prepared to go all the way with this because public confidence, understandably, is quite low?”
Dion Leslie,
“Like we’ve been saying from the beginning, we stand on the side of the law. Other councillors have said that, we believe that, it’s been a unanimous chant in the caucus meetings. We stand on the side of the law so we have to do everything to answer to the law. Those are responsible will be dealt with by the law and we have to be responsible to the residents of Belize City who elected us. That is why we are taking our time, we don’t want to rush into anything, and we are doing everything properly so we can get to the bottom of it and move on from there, however it may be.”
And while Financial Controller Davis has not met with the council, we are informed that he did request a meeting with the DPP; we cannot confirm that the meeting has occurred.
