And pretty soon you are talking about serious money.” This famous quote from the halls of the United States Congress seem very apt to describe what the Finance Ministry is trying to do: find out where a sum of RD$5 billion disappeared to. According to the Listin Diario, ministry technicians are investigating how this sum, which was produced in the Customs Department as part of the exchange commission charged on all imports, was spent. The funds were supposed to have been deposited directly into an account used to pay the foreign debt, but this was apparently not the case. According to Finance Minister Bengoa, “not one cent” was used to pay the foreign debt, and the former authorities sent the entire amount to the Finance Ministry and not to the Central Bank. Well, not all the money. According to Bengoa, total collection for the commission on currency exchange produced RD$12 billion, but only RD$7.936 billion was handed over to the Finance Ministry. Bengoa said that preliminary reports indicate that “off the budget” money was used by various government departments. To support this claim, he indicated that the 2004 budget had RD$2.55 billion penciled in for the payment of internal debts but RD$3.771 were paid on those accounts.