But how widespread is this practice of evading oversight by keeping the payments under 10 grand - and does it constitute fraud?
Well, in accounting terminology it's called "Structuring" - which is the deliberate act of breaking up a single, large financial transaction into multiple smaller ones for the clear purpose of evading a legal reporting threshold.
It would certainly fall under deceptive practices and clearly suggest corruption - but how widespread is it? Today we asked another Minister if he was familiar with the practice:
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"I can only speak of things in my ministry and that I am aware of. We operate according to what the regulations are, in fact the team that's being built at NBC I can tell you, we have made it very clear that besides competence which is very important, integrity is critical. A big thing that has adversely affected the industry has been issues where we can't have people who are doing their jobs fully and properly and in the case of NBC we are trying to make sure that we build our people so they can serve our customers as best as possible."
Courtney Menzies:
"But do you agree that this is a long standing practice that governments before and the current government is doing? In the case of doing the transactions below $10,000 so it doesn't have to go through the scrutiny."
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"I am new to the government system so I don't know if that's the practice or not. We are here to do what has to be done and that's what we do. I can only speak again to what we do and we have to do what is right, it's just as simple as that."
Courtney Menzies:
"There hasn't been any advice maybe from your senior colleagues like, you know you could do this or that, if you want you could send money through, less than $10,000. Maybe they mentioned it to you."
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"I hope you record this and put this there. People know who they're talking to when they're talking with me. I have my standards that I have maintained from I came into government and by the grace of God we have maintained them until we finish our service to our people. That's how I operate and I believe and I hope that all my colleagues operate the same way because that's why we were brought in the government, because people have confidence in us that we will do the right thing and that's not hard to do if you go to work and know that you're serving people. That's not hard at all."
Courtney Menzies:
"Do you think the government should open up the smart stream to be viewed and scrutinized by the public?"
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"Well I mean everything that we have as resources is really the resources of the people so that's a better question for you to ask maybe the financial secretary because for whatever reasons, there may be issues that have confidentiality integrated into it, I don't know I don't work in the Ministry of Finance so I can only speak again for what we do and when we sit at the conference table at our ministry I remind everybody in there that the seats we are sitting on are owned by the people of Belize."
We'll keep following the story, which is now pointing to an array of Mira-affiliated enterprises that have benefited from political favour under the PUP. For his part Mira has issued a statement saying that "lies and misinformation" are being circulated by hius former political opponent.
