After almost a week in trial, Belize City taxi-man, Nestor Gallindo, a Salvadoran national, was found guilty today of committing an aggravated assault upon a fifteen year-old minor on January second of this year. The assault occurred in Gallindo’s taxi after the child’s mother sent him to pick up her daughter. In trial, the minor […]
A Belizean accused of a horrific triple murder in Lee County, Florida in 2015 could face trial again after a relative’s inadvertent testimony caused a mistrial. Twenty-two-year-old Brian Hyde is accused of the murders by stabbing of his aunt, thirty-seven-year-old Dorla Pitts; his cousin, seventeen-year-old Starlette Pitts and her unborn child, and Pitts’ boyfriend, nineteen-year-old […]
The Prime Ministerial press conference delayed today’s Senate Special Select Committee hearing in Belmopan. The sole witness was former Acting Director of the Immigration Department, Maria Marin, who served in that role between February and September of 2013, the last seven months covered by the Auditor General’s Report, and thereafter until April of 2016 when […]
Marin noted that despite the original desires expressed by Minister Godwin Hulse and then-C.E.O. Candelaria Saldivar-Morter to support a clean-up in the department, they clashed immediately over the approval of visa applications recommended and supported by Government Ministers. Marin says the Ministry demanded control despite new reforms put in place at the start of Marin’s […]
Accompanied by attorney Darrell Bradley, Marin then answered questions from the reduced panel of senators led by Pro-tem chair Mark Lizarraga. She confirmed that the process for visa applications with recommendations by Ministers outlined by the Immigration Minister, Godwin Hulse, went against established procedure. But did Hulse and Saldivar-Morter deliberately ignore the protocols to please […]
For more than six months, the former Ballistic Examiner, Orlando Vera has been behind bars following a conviction for perverting the course of justice in the Michael Moderi gun related case. Vera was sentenced to two years imprisonment by the then Chief Magistrate, Anne Marie Smith. Today, after more than a month waiting to hear […]
At the age of fifteen years, Inmas Espinal, then a second form student at Canaan High School, was arrested charged and remanded to prison for the March fifteenth, 2012 attempted murder of naturalized Belizean, eighteen-year-old Jose Antonio Sarabia. The trial of the now twenty-year old concluded today before Justice Adolph Lucas in the Supreme Court […]
Twenty-three-year old Nijah Brandon, a construction worker from la Democracia Belize District, was today before the court to answer to a charge of possession of counterfeit currency but even as he was granted bail, he was quickly nabbed by police. On November twenty-third, 2017, police claim they found him with two fifty dollar currency notes […]
Solicitor General Nigel Hawke was actually the second of two witnesses called on Wednesday by the Senate Special Select Committee. On Wednesday morning, the senators held a private, in-camera session with Kent Clare, the current Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit. In the afternoon session, Hawke was asked to comment on the state of affairs […]
We leave this week’s hearings with a reminder of just how important they have become in the eyes of some. One year ago this month, the six members of the Special Select Senate Committee convened with a mandate to, among other things, conduct an inquiry into the processes, procedures, regulations and activities of the Immigration […]
The Barrow administration has been dealt yet another crippling blow by the Caribbean Court of Justice, after losing an appeal in respect of a long-drawn-out matter involving the defunct Universal Health Services. Earlier today, the C.C.J. reversed the ruling of the Belize Court of Appeal and ordered the Government of Belize to pay roughly eighty-eight […]
According to Courtenay, a letter will be forwarded to government later this week requesting payment. Should there be no response or a refusal to pay the outstanding debt, a certificate will be sought as part of the enforcement process. Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Belize Bank “I think it is important for the Belizean public […]
Solicitor General Nigel Hawke appeared on behalf of government and was first to express disappointment with the CCJ’s verdict. While he is awaiting further instructions, the Sol Gen maintains that government wasn’t imprudent when it decided not to honor the thirty-seven million dollar award back in 2013. Nigel Hawke, Solicitor General “It’s always a […]
The source of the lengthy proceedings is former Prime Minister Said Musa, whose administration back in 2004 entered into an agreement by signing a loan note between the Belize Bank and Universal Health Services. The People’s United Party government assumed the twenty-nine million dollar debt when UHS failed to pay the loan. When details of […]
According to Musa, the matter had been settled during his term in office and that government had indeed received funding from Taiwan and Venezuela that would have cleared the debt. Said Musa, Former Prime Minister “It was settled, as you know, by my government at the time, and indeed we had received grants from […]
Late this evening, the Belize Bank also issued a press release on the decision, stating, “In its judgment today, the CCJ granted permission to the Bank to enforce the L.C.I.A. Award in the same manner as a judgment or order of the Supreme Court to the same effect. It also ordered that the Bank have […]
Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay and Solicitor General Nigel Hawke were on opposite sides of the bar in a different forum this afternoon, specifically at the National Assembly in Belmopan where Hawke was a witness at the Special Senate Select Committee. He was questioned on various legal issues having to do with the work of the […]
The other legal opinion has to do with clarifying the status of Guatemalan nationals renouncing their citizenship in order to become Belizeans. The process of granting nationality to Guatemalans has been halted because it has not been made clear whether the renunciation of citizenship in Guatemala must take place before the Belize process is started […]
Also questioned was the matter of nationality through marriage to a Belizean. As seen in the case of Peter Dahlstrom, section eleven of the Nationality Act requires persons registering to be Belizeans to be both married to a Belizean and a resident in the country for one year. Dahlstrom was allowed to qualify by virtue […]
And finally from the Senate Special Select Committee tonight, Solicitor General Nigel Hawke addressed the issue of ministerial responsibility and alleged interference in the Department through direct instructions and recommendations to Immigration officers. The nation’s top legal eagle agreed with many previous witnesses that legally, such instructions and recommendations for services hold no sway, though […]
Two men from Punta Gorda Town were today acquitted in the Supreme Court of Justice Denis Hanomansingh of a charge of murder. Twenty-four-year old Albert Valentine and a seventeen-year-old minor were charged in the death of taxi driver Antonio Rodriguez, originally from Elridgeville, on December fifteenth, 2015. Rodriguez’s body was found with multiple stab wounds […]
Elvin Penner’s political career is in tatters after he was booted from Cabinet in September of 2013 over the Won Hong Kim scandal. He narrowly survived a recall drive shortly after, but was de-selected from the U.D.P. slate. Then he was the subject of hounding on criminal prosecutions by Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action. […]
Roger Tien – he was directly invited to Belize by Minister of Economic Development Erwin Contreras on the basis of making investments here. And Immigration Minister Godwin Hulse agreed to help after meeting Tien along with senior staff. He directed then-Acting Director of Immigration Maria Marin, in November of 2012, to peruse any applications by […]
At least one member of the Senate Special Select Committee, Ashley Rocke, has gone on record to say he believes that public officers are more to blame than Government ministers or anyone else for the mess that was the Immigration Department between 2011 and 2013. And while he was not about to throw his juniors […]
After a week’s hiatus, the Senate Special Select Committee returned with Minister of Immigration and Nationality Senator Godwin Hulse facing his Senate colleagues in the chair once again. Over three and a half hours of testimony – interrupted only by loss of power at the National Assembly Building – many topics relating to Immigration then […]
