Last night, we told you about Dr. Errol Elrington, the well-known brother of Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington - who has been laying low in Belize - after the US Office of the Inspector General, in the Department of Health and Human Services declared him a fugitive.
There is an arrest warrant for Dr. Elrington dating back to October of 2013, in which he is wanted for the federal charges of racketeering, Medicaid fraud and Health Care Fraud. It is alleged that Elrington falsely billed Medicare and Medicaid more than four hundred thousand dollars for services that he never performed, and he employed an unlicensed physician who engaged in criminal sexual misconduct.
Those are very serious offences - which carry huge fines and long prison sentences. And, the Inspector General's website says he is a fugitive, who left the states 24 hours after Federal Agents questioned him. We tried to reach Errol Elrington to ask him about the charges but we couldn't find him at the family home where we are told he has been staying.
Today, though, we did manage to catch up with his brother, attorney Hubert Elrington, and he told us that Errol's woes were actually caused by an employee, and that Dr. Elrington himself didn't actually do anything wrong:
Hubert Elrington
"I personally aware that there is a problem because I think about 2 months ago this report that you are referring to was posted on the internet. I don't know, but you all must have been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle."
Mike Rudon, Ch5
"Could you tell us what is the situation with your brother? Is he here in Belize?"
Hubert Elrington
"He is here in Belize. Mt brother as you know was a director of medical services in his substantive post up there at a hospital and he also own his own clinic, medical facility and as far as I understand he employed a doctor who represented to him that he had all his license and things but after a while it turned out that this doctor did not have some of the license that were needed. And you know in the United States they are very strict, they want you to check and if you don't check - so it's really a situation where an employee of his, a doctor, failed to get his proper medical license and was operating in my brother's clinic. So that is the situation. Now I understand that my brother has legal experts working for him in the States and they are dealing with the matter up there."
"He is probably the brightest of the Elringtons…he was the one who was able to do the physics and the mathematics and things like that without difficulty. So to me it is kind of regrettable that he was not paying the kind of attention he should have been paying but it sometimes happens in life and we live in a democracy. But it's not that he himself did anything wrong except employing a doctor to work in his clinic up there in the United States where he went and established a clinic."
Mike Rudon, Ch5
"Sir, area you ware if there has been any official move to get his back?"
Hubert Elrington
"I don't think that will even arise. I don't think this is one of the circumstances where that would even arise - that's just my view as a legal expert."
Dr. Elrington's brother, Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington is currently out of the country. If there are any formal requests from the US Government for Dr. Elrington's extradition to the US, it would come through the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Today a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson indicated that they are not aware of any such request. The US Embassy said that our request for comment has been directed to their Security Office.
We note however that those sympathetic to Dr. Elrington say that the type of offences he is accused of do not fall within the scope of the US-Belize extradition treaty.
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