The chairman of the scandal-hit Bermuda Housing Corporation was paid more than $20,000 for three months? work, it emerged yesterday.

Shadow Housing Minister Wayne Furbert squeezed the information out of Government during questions to his counterpart Terry Lister in the House of Assembly. Board chairman Charlton Dill was paid $21,229 for work between February 10 and May 9 this year. The the pay scale of $85,000 per annum was agreed by then Housing Minister David Burch.

?For a Minister to have approved payments such as these to a chair of a Board is unusual to say the least,? Mr. Furbert told .

?It is a total conflict of interest for the chair to be paid in this way, it is a case of friends paying friends. This is yet another example which shows what a debacle the whole BHC thing was.

?The Government needs to come clean on what happened with the BHC. Finding out this sort of thing really makes you wonder what else went on there??

Mr. Lister said that Government was allowed to pay quango board members where they undertook special work, and he attempted to justify the payments to Mr. Dill by explaining his duties.

Mr. Lister said, that among other duties, Mr. Dill had taken on ?organising and facilitating all maintenance issues and organising and facilitating meetings with appropriate parties?.

He told the House that a number of managers left the BHC leaving more work for remaining managers, such as Mr. Dill.

?There was a period during which the BHC was going through tremendous difficulty,? Mr. Lister said. ?Some staff left because they were subject to investigations, some were asked to leave, some did not want to be there due to the period of turmoil.?

Police were called in two years after a special investigation by the Auditor General into allegations of widespread corruption and fraud at the Government quango.

Two senior managers have been sacked while others have been suspended or resigned since the scandal came to light.

The investigation is thought to go right to the heart of the previous administration with senior Government Ministers embroiled in the debacle.