COLA cries there’s cover up in the Penner immigration scandal

Dean Barrow

So while Minister Hulse says maximum cooperation, the Auditor-General’s team is saying they received anything but that. That’s actually par for the course where COLA is concerned. They were encouraged by no less than Prime Minister Barrow to pursue private prosecution, but when it came to getting support and assistance from government functionaries, they’re batting zero. None of this comes as any surprise to a public which largely believes that government has circled its wagons around Elvin Penner, if not out of love for him, then out of a sense of self-preservation. At his press conference yesterday, the Prime Minister said, “Cover up? No way!” But COLA has reason to disagree.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“In terms of the suggestion that we are seeking to cover-up or to avoid a criminal prosecution I say again to you in the most straight-forward, measured way I possibly can…that is simply not true.”

Kareem Musa, Attorney for Private Prosecution

Kareem Musa

“I don’t know where the Prime Minister is living, whether it is Belize or Miami or London or Cannes or wherever these people are going these days. But has he not been seeing what is taking place. Has he not been watching the news every time COLA comes and says it is being road-blocked, it is being stonewalled when it comes to getting the necessary evidence. This Prime Minister says there is no cover-up. What I want to tell the Prime Minister is that it is his Commissioner of Police, the one that he appointed…the one that he is paying that today refuses to give us the evidence. It is his D.P.P. that has fallen off the radar. We have not heard from the D.P.P. It is his Auditor-General that has not come forth with this Auditor-General’s report. We had to actually get this from an anonymous source. A patriotic Belizean has come forward with this very damning report. So when the Prime Minister spoke yesterday, it is almost like he is in some kind of time warp. He feels as though he is in 2008, and he can feed the media and feed the nation whatever he wants and we will just eat it up…he thinks that we will just eat up whatever nonsense he’s saying, that there is no cover-up when all of the evidence is showing that there is a massive cover-up taking place.”

As we told you earlier, the media has not been privy to the report in its entirety. We have seen several other audit reports recently though, and there is usually a section of recommendations at the end. COLA says that the Auditor General has recommended that charges be brought against Elvin Penner and Director of Immigration Maria Marin and others, including the two recommenders who signed on all the documents.