Belize City Mayor and finance team to be criminally charged

It is the third politician to be charged with criminal offences by the U.D.P. government in this term. But on Thursday, it will be the first time in history that a serving Mayor, a female at that, will be paraded to the Queen Street Police Station to be processed and taken to court to hear her charges. But Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers will not be the only one facing the music. Three senior members of her finance team will also be arraigned on criminal charges. All heads of the Finance Department, including the City Administrator, Dr. Kiran Vanjani, along with Finance Director, Dwain Davis and his Assistant Director, Kiran Bhudrani are due in court. The slew of charges is yet to be confirmed and Mayor Moya Flowers’ battery of attorneys has stepped up the ante in her defense. On Tuesday Hubert Elrington had choice words about the prime minister and today Attorney Michael Peyrefitte matter-of-factly told News Five what he expects in the next twenty-four hours.

Michael Peyrefitte, Lead Defense Attorney, Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers
“My most important concern is the procedure when we go to meet Mr. Segura at the Queen Street Police Station tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. We have been working out the logistics as to, we’re gonna take the mayor and other people there and meet with Mr. Segura and he is going to do the charge and everything that comes with that. He and I have not yet discussed and he doesn’t have to disclose to me at this point what the charges will be so I don’t know what the charges are. He has not told me how many charges there are. All he told me was that there are charges for the mayor and so he would appreciate it if I would bring the Mayor there tomorrow morning, nine-thirty. We won’t know what the situation is until we actually see the charge and we have the charge or charges in our hands. So the defense will be based on the charge itself and whatever evidence the Crown brings to support those charges. I don’t want to speculate; like I said, I don’t even know. I will have a better idea of it when I get the charge sheet and then later on down the road, I get the evidence to supposedly support the charge. But we have to look at all of that first. It may very well be that these charges have nothing to do with under-depositing. It may very well be that they have everything to do with under-depositing. We don’t know yet so we have to wait until we get the charges and we get the evidence because we can speculate on invoices and receipts but what if when we go to court, those are not disclosed? Those would be of no holding so it doesn’t make any sense to speculate on them. The most important thing right now is for the mayor to know that she will be charged. She will be technically arrested, charged, taken over to court and she will be read charges. I don’t know if some of them will be indictable, I don’t know if some of them will be summary. I don’t know yet. But the number one thing is to get her to the police station tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, go with her to court and to, as quickly as possible, be done with court.”