This afternoon, it was the turn of Tench’s former supervisor, Vernon Leslie, to appear. He will retire in December after completing thirty years on the job, which he says he will miss. His name is in the Auditor General’s Report as the compiler of the report into the missing visa foils from December, 2012, and […]
As we have reported, former deputy Mayor of Belize City Eric Chang and financial controller with the Belize City Council, Patrick Tillett, declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Special Select Committee. But with all the times their names have been called in recent weeks, the Committee has seen fit to summon them for […]
The brothers Seawell – Mark, Gary and Duane – have been a staple of Belizean newscasts for more than a decade now. That’s how long they have been fighting extradition to the United States. Authorities from Ohio allege that they ran a marijuana and cocaine business involving so-called “shoe mules” between 1994 and 1997, when […]
Forty-three-year-old Albert Martinez of Western Paradise, Belize District is at the Central Prison this evening, unable to make a whopping twenty-thousand-dollar bail set for six traffic related offenses in the death of six-year-old Ashanti Pollard on Sunday night. Martinez was read three indictable offenses of manslaughter by negligence, causing death by careless conduct, and driving […]
Government of Belize chief press officer, Dorian Pakeman is due back in court on March tenth. He faces a charge of causing death by careless conduct for the traffic fatality that took the life of a Biscayne mechanic, Dean Dawson, back in March of 2016. There was no objection to bail when he was finally […]
Where is Andre Vega, son of former Minister of Natural Resources, Gaspar Vega? The Government wants to know, because it has been looking for him for months to serve him with papers for a court claim in relation to four hundred thousand dollars of tax payers’ monies that he received in compensation for the takeover […]
The Senate Special Select Committee will be meeting in public on Wednesday, March first, with two witnesses scheduled to testify. News Five has learned that those witnesses will be Immigration Officers Mark Tench and Vernon Leslie. Leslie has been identified as the whistleblower in the case of the eight missing visa foils from the Western […]
Eleven million shares, valued at fifty-five million Belize dollars – seven million in Belize Telemedia Limited and four million in Belize Electricity Limited – are up for purchase by the Social Security Board on behalf of contributors. It comes as the Government seeks financial windfalls to shore up its projected gap in revenue for the […]
The former Government C.E.O. does not claim to know the Government’s motivations for making this offer at this time, although Prime Minister Dean Barrow confirmed last week that Government always intended to sell more of its capital in B.T.L. and B.E.L. to S.S.B. and considered opening up to “the small man” – though that plan […]
Belize gave a fond farewell this afternoon to first Belizean-born Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Belize, the Most Reverend Osmond Peter Martin. The eighty-six-year-old Bishop Emeritus was memorialized in Catholic masses in his hometown Dangriga on Sunday morning and in Belize City this morning, but this afternoon’s funeral service was an official remembrance […]
A man in the north was stabbed and killed by his cousin over the weekend. Police are still looking for the killer and the family of the deceased believes that he may have crossed the border either in the north or west. The fifty-three-year-old father of eleven children tried to intervene in a domestic dispute, […]
In the city…a minor is tonight recovering at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital from gunshot wounds to the feet following a shooting on Sunday night in Belize City. Around eleven p.m. on Sunday, shots rang out on Antelope Street. Residents say up to six blasts were heard and at least five bullets penetrated the wooden […]
The first stage of an application by the Belize Bank Limited, supported by Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited, to discharge an injunction granted by Justice Michelle Arana restraining the company from enforcing a more than fifty-two million Belize dollars arbitral award and U.S. District Court judgment against the Government came up in the Supreme Court today. […]
As previously reported, Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited has filed a Constitutional claim challenging the validity of the Central Bank (International Immunities) Act and the Crown Proceedings (Amendment) Act. Those matters are coming up in March. As for the arbitration award for Belize Social Development Limited, which are the former shareholders of Belize Telemedia Limited seeking […]
Tragedy struck on Sunday night in Belize City when a six-year-old girl was knocked down and killed sometime before seven o’clock. Ashanti Pollard and her mother Dawn Swasey were walking on Fabers Road Extension when a car travelling at high speed hit Pollard. The child received massive head and body injuries and died within less […]
Senior Counsel Denys Barrow is a few months away from becoming Belize’s highest ranked appointed judge regionally. He will join the bench of the Caribbean Court of Justice in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in June, leaving behind a lucrative career as top pick for the Government of Belize to litigate cases in the local and […]
Andre Vega, son of former Deputy Prime Minister Gaspar Vega, remains at the heart of a land scandal involving a parcel of prime real estate near the Haulover Creek and for which he was handsomely compensated. The land in question was acquired from the Ministry of Natural Resources by Andre for a paltry sum back […]
Since the weekend, the social media page, Belizean Cheaters and all its evolutions have been wreaking havoc across the country. Even as the pages are reported to the Facebook Administrator, visits have increased by leaps and bounds. Using fake profiles, information and pictures of men and women have been posted, slandering many reputations in the […]
The chorus of disapproval in the wake of the social media spectacle is forcing lawmakers to look carefully at new legislation to address the issue of cyber bullying. As it stands, Belize’s laws do not cover internet crimes, allowing for online users to virtually get away with these offenses. Earlier today, Solicitor General Nigel Hawke […]
Lord Michael Ashcroft’s interview with News Five this week touched on a wide range of topics but the one of most current interest is the various arbitral awards under litigation in the United States. The U.S. courts in Washington D.C. have approved BCB Holdings and the Belize Bank to attempt to enforce their award over […]
As pointed out by the principals of Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited, the language in the Crown Proceedings (Amendment) Act is similar to those passed in the Supreme Court of Judicature Act a few years ago that were subsequently struck down by the Caribbean Court of Justice. It is Lord Michael Ashcroft’s view that the similar […]
And this coming Monday, February twenty-seventh, the Supreme Court will hear an application by CIHL to discharge an injunction granted by Justice Michelle Arana restraining the company from enforcing a more than fifty-two million Belize dollars arbitral award and U.S. District Court judgment against the Government. CIHL has also filed a constitutional claim in the […]
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, have begun deportation raids in support of new policy by the Donald Trump administration. Hundreds have been rounded up across the country and reports in international media suggest that Belizeans may be among them. When deportees come home via the Philip Goldson International Airport, they are typically […]
In an exclusive interview with News Five in Washington, D.C. Lord Michael Ashcroft touched on a wide variety of major stories, from the settlement of Belize Telemedia Limited’s nationalization by Government and the problems with payment to ongoing wrangles over arbitration awards and the impact of the titanic struggle on Belize’s economy. We start with […]
Much of the half a billion dollar settlement has to do with the Accommodation Agreement signed seven years earlier. That in turn reaches back to the mid-2000’s when Jeffrey Prosser was in charge at B.T.L. but was unable to come up with finance to complete his purchase. The Government, at the time, turned to Lord […]
