Tonight, more screenshots are coming out of the Ministry of Defence - they provide a compelling snapshot of a flurry of transactions in April and May of this year, all under the ten thousand dollar threshold.
These transactions are made more interesting by the fact that the company involved, Meat Masters - formally registered in 2025 - is owned by a cousin of CEO Francis Usher's wife.
We have five screenshots showing 54 payments, capturing transactions between April 13 and May 11, 2026, all under ten thousand dollars and totaling close to half a million dollars.
But what jumps out is the 35 invoices posted on a single day: May 11th for a total of over three hundred thousand dollars. All under $10,000.
We reached out to the CEO Francis Usher who confirmed that the owner of Meat Masters is his wife's cousin. He added that he applied to tender this year and won two lots to provide some of the meat items as well as fish. And even though it is a relative, he said the owner quote, "went through the entire open tendering process and I can ensure I intervened at no point."
When we asked about the same pattern of invoice splitting or structuring he said, quote, "They are paid how they are submitted, and the BDF/BCG submits them for payment in batches."
When we asked about the 35 invoices processed on a single day, he said that represents 2 months' worth of fish and meat for the BDF and BCG, and it just happens that they were batched together for processing. He added that the pattern of batch payments is common with most companies which provide rations. However, we note that payments can also be batched above $10,000, creating a single invoice for the total amount of meat provided that month.
When we spoke to Usher a few hours ago he said that they will be embarking on a new system of batching payments:
Francis Usher, CEO - DEFENCE
"What we're doing now is that multiple invoices or multiple purchase orders, when they become invoices, with the way the bills are submitted, we compile them into one big invoice for one payment by suppliers so that when you look at that invoice, the details will say reference invoice, this, this, this, this, and then you, it will have, the accompanying documents and by doing it like that, we are sending it over to the Ministry of Finance. We're sending it over to the Contractor General, just in an attempt to show that, hey, there is the audit will reveal… We currently are not doing anything outside the realm of what is legal, what is possible. We're getting value for money. Items are being delivered and we are sending all of the documents for further scrutiny just to give the ease of mind that things have been and continue to be done the right way."
We'll keep following this story.
