A new batch of leaked invoices is adding momentum to the controversy over government spending, and it’s the fine print that’s turning heads. Records show more than one-point-five million dollars paid to a company reportedly tied to the Mira family. Now, auditors are raising red flags over a pattern of small, repeated payments and unusual changes across invoices, details they say demand closer scrutiny. News Five’s Paul Lopez has a breakdown.
Paul Lopez, Reporting
Newly leaked Smart Stream invoices show over one point five million dollars in payments to Fast Construction. Keith Mira, the brother of Oscar Mira, is listed as Senior Project Manager for the company. Of the one hundred and fourteen invoices we reviewed, only ten were for payments above ten thousand dollars, the remaining one hundred and four were all for payments below ten thousand dollars, following the same trend that is reflected in invoices reviewed for Jenny Mira, MP Farms and Stanley Mira.
The receipts also confirm that it was not only grocery bags that the Prime Minister’s Office was purchasing from the Miras. On the fourteenth of December 2021, a twenty-nine-thousand-dollar payment was made from the PM’s Office to Fast Construction, though there is no information on what works were conducted. And three days later, during that same month, a payout of nineteen thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars is attached to invoice number PMBZ-CDF. Fast Construction also works for the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing, but most of those payments were well above the ten thousand dollars threshold, as were works conducted for the Ministry of Economic Transformation.
The invoices also reflect the pattern of single digits being added to the same invoice names, like CIVILBATH 1,2,3,4, all for payments under ten thousand dollars. And this same pattern is repeated across many of the leaked invoices. In one case, the invoice name and number were nearly identical. The only differentiating features were dots versus slashes. This pattern, too, is seen multiple times across the leaked documents. Here, these invoice numbers are practically the same, except for the dot at the end of the second one. And it’s anomalies like these that prompted Financial Secretary Joseph Waight to respond.
Joseph Waight
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary
“I saw it for the first time. It looks questionable. In any computer thing they read the fields and the number of digits and so, if you put another digit it is a new number, whether it is a comma, a dot, or a new number itself. But it took a certain amount of creativity.”
The records show payments spanning from February 2021, just months after the Briceño administration took office, through September 2025. Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.
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