In a sharp rebuke of alleged systemic financial misconduct in Belize’s public sector, the Public Service Union (PSU) has launched a formal legal push for transparency, accusing government finance officials of intentionally structuring large payments to evade mandatory oversight and enabling public funds misappropriation. The union’s action, filed June 12, 2026 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), comes on the heels of explosive reports revealing Jenny Armstrong, sister of incumbent Belmopan Area Representative and Home Affairs Minister Oscar Mira, collected over $1.7 million in government disbursements between 2020 and 2025.
At the center of the PSU’s allegations is a 2023 transaction that underscores the supposed illicit practice: on September 14 of that year, 12 separate invoices totaling more than $103,000 were approved for Armstrong alone. As the PSU outlines in its official request, breaking a single large payment into a dozen smaller chunks requires manual creation of 12 distinct entries in the government’s SmartStream financial system. The union argues it is extraordinarily improbable that each invoice accurately disclosed that it was just one segment of a larger aggregated payment. If the transaction’s true nature was intentionally omitted from the invoice comment fields, the PSU contends, every entry qualifies as a premeditated false record entered into the government’s official financial infrastructure.
The alleged scheme is designed to circumvent strict financial controls put in place by the Belize government in 2022. Circular No. 1 of 2022 mandates that any single payment exceeding $10,000 must go through rigorous multi-level oversight, including two separate approval checks by the Treasury Department. By contrast, payments that fall below the $10,000 threshold can be processed entirely internally within individual government ministries and departments, with no external Treasury review. The PSU’s claim is that finance officers are deliberately splitting large payments into sub-$10,000 chunks to skip this mandatory oversight process.
Notably, the union stops short of placing direct blame on elected ministers, noting that cabinet members do not personally process or approve routine payments. Instead, the full weight of responsibility is placed on the finance officers who enter and sign off on the manipulated invoices. The PSU also notes that department heads and chief executive officers may have ordered finance staff to structure payments in this way, making them complicit in the misconduct.
In its formal statement, the PSU did not mince words describing the practice: “They are accomplices to corruption. This is not a simple mistake; it is a deliberate and corrupt scheme to steal the public’s money without being caught.”
Through the FOIA request, the union is seeking a full breadth of records covering a five-year window from April 2021 to March 2026. The requested documents include the identities of all ministries, departments, finance officers, department heads, and CEOs implicated in the payment-splitting practice, as well as the names of all vendors that received these structured disbursements. The PSU has also requested complete copies of all relevant SmartStream invoices, purchase orders, and approval documentation related to the transactions.
Beyond the information request, the PSU is calling on Belize’s Auditor General to launch a full independent review of government financial records covering the same five-year period, and to publish a complete unredacted report of its findings for the public. In cases where misconduct is confirmed, the union is pushing for immediate suspension or termination of all involved personnel, and referral of the cases to the Belize Police Department and Director of Public Prosecutions to open criminal investigations into potential charges including fraud and abuse of public office.
The Accountant General, Auditor General, and Contractor General now have 30 days to respond to the FOIA request, with a formal response deadline set for July 10, 2026.