By Belize Live News Staff: The split-payments scandal has produced no shortage of accusations and defences. What it had not produced, until now, was a Cabinet minister stating plainly that the matter demands a serious investigation. Michel Chebat just did.
“The allegations being raised are very serious allegations and they must be treated very seriously,” the Minister of Public Utilities, Energy, and Logistics said in an interview reported by 7News. Then came the line that will travel: “Public funds do require public accounting, there is no way of getting around that.”
The scandal turns on a pattern. As 7News has reported, payments to a company identified as RSL consistently landed just under the $10,000 threshold, the magic number below which a Financial Officer can approve a payment without the Treasury Department taking a second look. The issue exploded into public view at the Ministry of Defence, but the outlet reports the practice is widespread across government ministries. It bears repeating that these are allegations, currently the subject of a government-ordered audit that has yet to produce findings.
Chebat insists the machinery of accountability is already turning. Cabinet and the Prime Minister understand the stakes, he said, and “we have now taken the necessary steps to make sure that this happens.” He professed “every faith in the process we have undertaken,” and confidence that Belizeans will recognise the effort.
Then came the political balancing act. Pressed on whether the scandal will cost the PUP at next March’s municipal elections, Chebat argued the controversy cannot define the government. He pointed to what he called tremendous work in education, housing, and health care, urging voters to “look at the whole picture to tell the story of this government.” And yet he closed where he began, with the words that separate this interview from standard damage control: “These are serious allegations and they require a serious investigation.”
The Opposition will note that a serious investigation is precisely what it has been demanding, though the UDP wants it independent and forensic, not internal. Tracy Panton’s party has taken that demand to the streets, while the government holds up the ongoing audit as proof of process.
Between those positions now stands a minister’s own words: the money is public, the accounting must be too. The investigation’s findings, whenever they arrive, will show whether the process deserved his faith, and the public’s.
