An investigation into the misappropriation of Corozal Town Council funds is currently underway and as a consequence, the council's Revenue Manager has been relief of his duties. While Mayor Campos agreed to give both CTV3 News and Channel Seven News and interview, he apparently changed his mind after Minister Pablo Marin arrived at the Town Council. While we were waiting for the interview we were informed that the Mayor will not grant CTV3 News an interview but will speak to our colleague from Seven News. Now, all we can say is that Mayor Campos decided not to speak to us after receiving orders from Pablo Marin. With that, we definitely know which of the two holds the bigger gun.

As mentioned, he did give our colleague from Channel Seven news an interview. And we managed to get that interview after it was aired by the Belize City media house. Here is what Campos said about the alleged misappropriation of $80,000.

Hilberto Campos- Mayor Corozal Town

"We have been investigating the case. I think on Monday the local government will be here. In respect to the $80,000 that's a ridiculous amount, not even close to that figure. It's a couple thousand dollars and yes to a certain degree the revenue department is pretty much on hold, we have two employees that didn't return obviously, but we are doing the investigation. One was them was relief from his duties, the revenue manager. At this time it's not appropriate to accuse directly one individual. What I could assure you is upon finishing the investigation it will be brought up to light exactly what happened and exactly how much we are talking about."

Daniel Ortiz- Reporter

"How much the town council has been able to confirm have been missing while investigating the records?"

Hilberto Campos- Mayor Corozal Town

"Like I mentioned to you I don't want to compromise the investigation but a couple thousand dollars, but definitely believe if $80,000 was missing from the Corozal Town Council something would have been done."

The missing funds were made aware to the council two weeks before the Christmas break. Today when we contacted the former revenue manager, whose name, and those of the others accused we will not reveal since they have not been charged, he told us he was not fired from the council; instead he resigned voluntarily to further his studies. When we asked him about the accusations made against him he stated he has no idea what we are talking about and the ones we should question are the Mayor and the town administrator.

What will become of those funds or the investigation is yet to be ascertained. We'll follow this story in next week's newscast.

CTV3