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Former Prime Minister Said Musa paid the Belize Bank another secret US$10 million for Universal Health Services. So it’s not only the first secret US$10 million from the Venezuelans that was diverted to the Belize Bank, but that was followed by another secret ten million dollars from the Taiwanese. And it happened as far back as September 2007 – without a whisper of public disclosure. It is another stunning secret kept by the last government, and Prime Minister Dean Barrow dropped it like a bombshell today in his second press conference in less than a week.

Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“Matters have become even more alarming. In fact, the previous administration paid over not ten million U.S. to the Belize Bank with respect to the UHS debt but 20 million U.S. dollars. In addition to the ten million dollars from Venezuela that we knew about, the inquiry has discovered and disclosed that there was another ten million U.S. dollars gifted to the people and government of Belize by the Republic of China on Taiwan. Mr. Musa had sought from the government of Taiwan a US$10 million grant for use in the health care system of Belize.

In fact the Taiwanese government was not gifting the Belize government this ten million dollars for the repayment of the UHS loan but for use generally in solving the needs of the health care system of the country. But based on the correspondences that I have seen, it appears the checks were not given directly to the Belize Bank, they were sent to the then Prime Minister and he in turn passed on the checks to the Belize Bank.

In any case certainly the ex-Prime Minister of this country knew that these monies were not gifted for the repayment of the UHS loan to the Belize Bank. And that apart, you are only now finding out, that is the Belizean public is only now finding out that there was this $20 million that from as long ago as October of last year Taiwan had given to Belize which the then Prime Minister and his government used to pay towards the UHS without so much as a buyer leave from the Belizean electorate, from the Belizean people, without even informing the nation that this money had been received.”