Seventeen-month-old Allyssa Nunez passed on Sunday morning, but from Friday, twenty-one-year-old Everal Martinez of Maskall was in police custody on a charge of dangerous harm. That charge has been lifted and he is now facing four counts of sexually-related offenses. This morning, as Martinez was read his charges, the police barricaded the Magistrate’s Court for […]
The death of the Baby Alyssa has sparked outrage across the country, some impromptu and others organized protests have held since the weekend. This morning before Everal Martinez was brought for arraignment, Belizeans came out in front of the Magistrate Court to make a statement that abuse against children cannot be countenanced in any shape […]
Prior to being arraigned before Senior Magistrate Aretha Ford, Everal Martinez was charged with deadly use of harm on Friday evening. The single count was presumably a holding charge, a temporary indictment to keep Martinez in custody until this morning when the more substantive charges were preferred. While there were many at the protest earlier […]
As outrage grows against the vile circumstances that led to the death of Alyssa, there is another case that police are investigating. A seven-year old schoolgirl was allegedly abused by a sixty-seven year old man who she called granddad. The incident happened about two weeks ago and came to light when the behaviour of the […]
Today police went on the south side looking for what’s reported to be remains of a baby buried in a yard. Reports had been circulating since Sunday that a mother had killed and buried her newborn at a yard on Antelope Street Extension. This morning, there was no confirmation on this report at the press […]
Leader of the Opposition John Briceño has written separate letters to Prime Minister Dean Barrow, Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie, and director of the Financial Intelligence Unit Kent Clare, demanding an investigation of Minister for Human Development Anthony “Boots” Martinez. Briceño writes that an apparent illegal and corrupt scheme was established between Martinez as minister […]
Just before news time a small protest was held in front of the Queen Street Police Station by persons to condemn the rape of an infant. Police have just now charged for dangerous harm, the stepfather of the child, a twenty- one year old resident from Maskall who was left to care for the child […]
The rape of the seventeen-month-old baby girl has sparked outrage across the country and the National Committee for Families and Children (N.C.F.C.) joined the UNICEF AND B.F.L.A. in condemning this brutal attack on the toddler. The N.C.F.C. says that it, “condemns all sexual explicit acts, especially of this atrocious nature, which continue to breakdown our […]
Tonight, Minister of Human Development Anthony “Boots” Martinez remains in boiling hot water as scandals continue to erupt around him. New information shows that this week he personally approved almost fifty thousand dollars, processed through the Government’s SmartStream system, as payment for seven individuals. The largest payment was of eight thousand, three hundred dollars. The […]
Five members of Minister Rene Montero’s family, in 1998, acquired between them eighty-one acres of land in two pristine and remote locations. One was the Privassion Enclave in the Mountain Pine Ridge and the other on northern Ambergris Caye. They paid a total of twenty-four thousand, two hundred and thirty-six dollars. But after the properties […]
In 2016, the Caribbean Court of Justice ended months of impasse when it ruled that the Public Utilities Commission could not charge excessive spectrum fees to Speednet Communications, parent company of Smart, totaling three million dollars in as many years. Speednet had previously lost in the lower courts. Now, the P.U.C. wants to collect some […]
With a permanent injunction now in force on the P.U.C. from collecting, might it decide to withdraw the approval and potentially cripple Speednet’s reach across Belize? The company has more than one hundred thousand customers, and Courtenay told us that no court would look favorably on such a mean-spirited move. Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for […]
The office of the Prime Minister sought to reassure Belizeans that the government will be able to extricate itself from what the Financial Secretary Joseph Waight described as an impending financial crash due to high levels of debt and overspending. Waight wrote to the CEOs asking them not to look for money in their budgets […]
We start the news tonight with a sickening report of the rape of a toddler. The seventeen-month old girl is clinging to life at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. The child’s twenty-one year old stepfather from the village of Maskall, Belize District allegedly raped the infant. Because of the sensitivity of the incident few details […]
The urban violence and abuse of children has prompted UNICEF to speak out. The U.N. organization issued a release this afternoon highlighting the responsibility of adults to protect children and encourage them to grow. Children, says UNICEF, have been tragically hurt and some have lost their lives due to gun violence, physical abuse and sexual […]
There is more scandalous information tonight about the hustle in the Ministry of Natural Resources known as the hot bed of corruption. A past P.U.P. administration in 1998 repossessed eighty-one acres of land in separate parcels in the Privassion Enclave area of the Mountain Pine Ridge and on North Ambergris Caye. The land was acquired […]
Briceño, himself a former Lands Minister, says the seventy-one million figure paid out for land compensation is more than three times the amount paid out under his Ministry in eight years in charge. As for why the land was taken back, Briceño says there were separate issues at play. But he notes that none of […]
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, […]
The P.U.P. leader placed full blame on Prime Minister Dean Barrow for not following through on his repeated promise to stamp out corruption. He insisted that nobody knows for sure what has been going on even though Martinez appears to be showing a conspicuous increase in wealth from ten years ago. And that, he said, […]
Between July of 2016 and October of 2017, when he was terminated, the first of several regular payments by journal voucher, for eight thousand two hundred dollars, was deposited to the Saint John’s Credit Union account of Kirk Lamb, only to be withdrawn days later. The pattern became similar: deposits every month, sometimes every week […]
This afternoon, Saint John’s Credit Union which is named as the institution where the deposits were made into Lamb’s account issued a brief release stating it will not be providing information on the account. The release states, “Saint John’s Credit Union Limited is aware that our institution has been mentioned in recent reports in the […]
While on the ground in Port Loyola, the P.U.P. were sure to put their two cents in on the revelations made by Kirk Lamb on Tuesday night. Standard bearer Gilroy Usher Senior and mayoral candidate Bernard Wagner both deplored what they see as bare-faced corruption and mishandling of public funds. Bernard Wagner, P.U.P. Mayoral […]
Minister “Boots” Martinez carefully distinguished between the non-governmental organization Housing for the Poor and the Southside Poverty Alleviation Project, the former of which Kirk Lamb claimed he deposited monies given to him for. The Minister says he is, as far as he knows, not aware that Lamb did any contract work for the N.G.O., but […]
The 2012-13 general audit conducted by the Supreme Audit Institution listed numerous instances of mismanagement and improper practice in several ministries of government, most notably Works and Education. Under the tenure of Anthony “Boots” Martinez, a total of nine hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars was expended to Special Effects and Special Effects Performance for tires, […]
A fuel crisis has been averted for now, even though a PDVSA tanker is in the harbour waiting to unload. It is claimed that government owes PDVSA, but that allegation has been refuted. Since Tuesday, nine overland tankers laden with some seventy-two thousand gallons of regular fuel have been arriving via the western border. A […]
