“Boots” concerns corner the market in Port Loyola

The P.U.P. also wants Anthony “Boots” Martinez’s head on the chopping block. Since early this week, there have been reports about the alleged rip off at the Ministry of Works where he was the principal. On Wednesday he insisted he had nothing to do with allegations by his former caretaker Kirk Lamb that he, Martinez, accepted payments for alleged contract work with the Southside Poverty Alleviation Project that was deposited to Lamb’s account in Lamb’s name. The deposits were in the thousands of dollars. P.U.P. leader John Briceño pointed to other agencies that should have investigated Martinez, and two other non-governmental organizations created to apparently serve Martinez’s interest, including land acquisition in the name of his attorney daughter.

John Briceño, P.U.P. Leader

John Briceño

“Any law-abiding citizen would know that if you go to the bank with a five-thousand dollar cheque or a two-thousand dollar cheque or even a thousand-dollar cheque, the bank or the credit union will ask you a million and one questions for them to be able to deposit that money in your account. And here these monies have been deposited to the tune of one hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars in one account, of Mr. Lamb. It seems that no red flags were raised; it seems that the F.I.U. has turned a blind eye or been sleeping at the wheel. The point is that it has been allowed for Mr. Lamb to get a hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars under the Southside Poverty Alleviation Project, to pass over through Housing for the Poor, to supposedly making these houses. Were these houses built? We don’t know. How many houses were built? We don’t know. It has also been brought to our attention that there are other companies and NGO’s that are all somehow directly or indirectly linked to Boots Martinez. We have the Port Loyola Organization for Women, where one of the directors is one Lauren Burgess-Eagan. Where I think they are paid twenty-seven dollars; they charge twenty-seven dollars per pantry bag that they give to the women and they charge another twelve fifty per package. All of these monies are just going around and around the same people that are somehow linked directly or indirectly to Minister Martinez, and no kind of investigation is being done. We have the issue here of Port Loyola Housing for the Poor that we just talked about, where supposedly all of these houses have been built. Again, we have Martha Davis and Manuel Malic, the people who are the subscribers to Port Loyola Housing for the Poor, which is a company, by the way. We have also Port Loyola Development, Health and Education [Fund]. And it seems that the only business that the Port Loyola Development, Health and Education Fund is about – land acquisition. The owners of this company are one Anthony Martinez and Albert Moody. And we have been seeing a number of parcels of land that has been registered in this company from Government. They have acquired land in Port Loyola, they have acquired land in Queen’s Square; in Lake Independence, in South San Pedro, and in Caribbean Shores. And in some instances – we see two instances where the lands have been registered in the name of his daughter, Stacey Martinez.”