An Update on the Petrocaribe Case

John Briceño

Earlier in the year, Prime Minister Dean Barrow and Opposition Leader John Briceño went at each other over the former Chief Justice’s ruling on public funds. CJ Kenneth Benjamin ruled that that government illegally spent over a billion dollars in public funds. The verbal ruling found that the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance breached the Finance and Audit Reform of Act when he spent the monies without parliamentary approval. CJ Benjamin also ruled that a constitutional amendment to correct the matter and a timeframe of six months was given. Benjamin is no longer the Chief Justice and the deadline is fast approaching. So what happens now? That is what Briceño was asked on Wednesday.

John Briceño, Leader of the Opposition

“I think that is a question that you will need to ask the present Chief Justice or somebody at the Supreme Court. I am unable to answer you. But we do believe that previous Chief Justice did make a ruling, he did hand down a verbal judgment but then as we all know that he takes a long time to be able to give a written submission and it was unfortunate that his time came to an end before he can give that in writing., But as far as we are concerned that should be a legal and binding judgment on behalf of the previous Supreme Court justice  Let’s not forget that six hundred million dollars that they got from that oil  money that they have mismanaged and they spent every dollar of it, the five hundred million dollars that was borrowed under the Petrocaribe scheme with Venezuela and that money has been spent. We could talk all day how badly that money has been mismanaged or even some real corrupt deals took place.”