Sedi on Marcel Cardona

Marcel Cardona

Over a month ago attorney Marcel Cardona was taken before the General Legal Council to answer to an allegation that he had overcharged a client for services – and even worse, that he told the client that he needed the money to bribe a Magistrate. Word in legal circles was that Cardona had been suspended for a year, but then Cardona’s attorney, Godfrey Smith, claimed in a release that it was not true, and Cardona was still fully licensed to practice law. So what’s the reality – well we attempted to get some answers from Attorney-General Wilfred Elrington on Wednesday, who told us that he doesn’t deal with those matters anymore.

Wilfred Elrington

Wilfred Elrington, Attorney General

“Let me be very candid with you. You know that we changed the law in relation to the General Legal Counsel so that the Attorney General is no longer the chair person. That chairperson is the Chief Justice. Since we made the change, I have only sat on one of the meetings and that meeting did not deal with the Cardona issue. My agenda is just too crowded to afford me the opportunity to sit on these disciplinary boards and it is for that reason in part that I wanted to change the composition of the General Legal Counsel and the chairmanship. So I gave that up. That was not necessarily a view that was shared very fully by the cabinet, but they were persuaded by my argument. I am always on the go, these matters are important matters and they need to be dealt with expeditiously. I am not always around so it is best to have the Chief Justice as the Chair and he also sits on the committee so really the most senior person in the country is the head of the Judiciary. I must say to the Belizean public too that you can also have recourse against attorneys to the courts. You are not barred from going to the court. Yes the General Legal Counsel certainly under the Chief Justice is moving very expeditiously; now they are moving very, very fast. While I was the chairman, it was still working even though I could not attend meetings because it was always possible for me to have somebody to represent me. But it did not work as fast. Now that he is there, it is moving very, very, very fast. And it is important that these things are dealt with expeditiously because they always involve matters of great concern to the client.”