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Cabinet has directed that NICH President Sapnah Budhrani should be re-instated.  This is exactly one month after Cabinet directed that she should be placed on administrative leave.  That’s after the wind of a scandal blew all the way to Belmopan - when portions of an internal audit leaked into the media.  

Well, today Cabinet voted to re-instate Budhrani after reviewing the findings of the external auditor, Baker Tilly Hulse.  

They found that the internal auditor did not apply sufficient due diligence.  With that, the NICH Board of Directors voted yesterday to re-instate Budhrani and terminate the internal auditor.  Today, Cabinet - led by Faber as acting Prime Minister voted to do the same.  Faber explained:…

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Culture
"Out of an abundance of caution the Cabinet said well, let an external auditor look at things and see if what is being said is true or not. That has been done now and so Cabinet agreed this morning that Ms. Budhrani should be reinstated immediately and supported the decision as well that Mr. Matus be terminated."

Jules Vasquez
"Those who are observant of how good governance works will say that this is a very perverse strategy to punish a whistle-blower but the man's intentions were apparently good. He wanted transparency and good governance in NICH and for that he's being terminated."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"Before you got any further, I don't know that Mr. Matus is a whistle-blower you know, I don't know of any situation where he came out rightly to say that he leaked the document and that he was concerned about what was going on. He was merely doing his job; nobody has proven that he intentionally leaked information to try to bring the institution into question, so that does not apply at all."

Jules Vasquez
"Is it because he has now gone after your choice for president and it's an individual choice, the prime minister said..."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"Again you are falsely leading people, there's nothing to suggest that Mr. Matus went after the president, you are saying so you know. The internal auditor Mr. Matus as far as we know to be, was merely carrying out his duties as the internal auditor; however wrong the procedures he was using, that was his intention, to just carry on and do what work he thought he was doing. But it turns out the man never know what he was doing."

Jules Vasquez
"But he did know what he was doing from a long time; he only got terminated now because he went after your choice of president."

Hon. Patrick Faber
"No, if your point is the situation was there for such a long time and nothing was done about it, well that is how it is in the wider government - a lot of situations exists but for you to say because that the termination is imminent now - or has happened already that it was because he challenged something that shows me out so to speak, as you put it. I can't agree that was his intentions, I don't have any proof for that."