Tens of thousands of dollars missing from the Corozal Town Council

Hilberto Campos

Eighty thousand dollars has been jacked from the Corozal Town Council, and it was an inside job. That’s the allegation from the northern municipality, where word surfaced that three employees of the council were terminated following the discovery of missing monies. Those monies are allegedly part of the revenues collected by the municipality through taxes and fees. The collection is done by the Revenue Department, presided over by a Revenue Manager, and tax collectors working under his watch. But it is that Revenue Manager, and two of his collectors, who not only had their hands in the cookie jar, but took those cookies home with them. Multiple attempts to reach Corozal Mayor Hilberto Campos today failed, but late this evening we did get some confirmation, thanks to an interview done by our colleagues at KREM news. Campos denied outright that eighty thousand dollars is missing. There is money missing, but the Mayor claims that it’s not much at all…just a little thing.

Voice of: Hilberto Campos, Mayor, Corozal Town

“There’s been a little misappropriation of funds, so to speak, but I don’t want to go into details when it comes to figures and our people involved. I could tell you that there is an investigation being done at the moment including Monday, we are supposed to be meeting local government and to see exactly the details of this whole things. I don’t want to give much more because I don’t want to jeopardize the investigation, but I can’t tell you that two of the employees of the town council that were involved did not show up to work obviously there is some kind of guilt or scared of something. And the person in charge of the revenues department, he was practically released of his duties until the result of the investigation.”

Reporter

“Can you say in terms of timeframe when this all happened? When they didn’t show up for work? When did you find out? How did you find out?”

Voice of: Hilberto Campos

“When we found out, the revenue manager; he went to do a training in Japan and upon his absence for almost two and half months, we practically caught up with something fishy. And we started off the investigation. They haven’t showed up to works for two weeks now and we’ve been doing the investigation like I mentioned. Probably Monday evening, we will have something concrete to share with the media. There were some figure being thrown out there at some radio station in Orange Walk, but it is a ridiculous figure of eighty thousand dollars. I could assure you that it is not even close to that ridiculous or outrageous amount. So it is definitely not close to that amount.”

According to Campos, the matter is being handled internally. Multiple sources have told News Five that contrary to the Mayor’s assertion, it’s not a ‘little’ misappropriation at all.