As we told you on Wednesday, Paul Ku got a Belizean passport with the approval of then-Immigration Director Ruth Meighan and then-Minister Carlos Perdomo, despite issues with his application flagged by retired Immigration Officer, Therese Chavarria. Ku was sponsored by naturalized Belizean, Rina Chiu Hsiang Lo, who has been described in the Senate hearings as […]
The hearing concluded with some fireworks, as Business Senator Mark Lizarraga pressed the former Minister on a particular application for one Mohamed Mohamed Khalil Owemer, a Saudi/Palestinian national who applied for nationality through marriage but was not qualified. Perdomo said he looked for the specific approvals of the Officer in Charge of the Section and […]
Senator for the Churches, Ashley Rocke, has told News Five that he believes he has seen enough of the public testimony for the Senate Special Select Committee. He also opined that public officers are as much to blame as ministers of government for the breakdown in services at the Immigration Department. We spoke to two […]
The Senate Special Select Committee called former Minister of Immigration and Nationality and National Security Carlos Perdomo as its sole witness today. Perdomo presided over the Ministry during the early part of the period under investigation, 2011-2013. He was questioned about various issues under his tenure, including the case of Paul Ku, who was granted […]
But how would ministers handle request for assistance with passport and nationality applications? Perdomo said he told the auditors that in his time, he would send a note inquiring about the reason behind a delay for a particular application and address it to Director Ruth Meighan, but that he did not consider this interference – […]
The “culture of corruption” has become a theme of the Senate Inquiry. Various Immigration officers have come forward to acknowledge that the department was largely at the mercy of ministers of government and their lackeys who pretty much got what they wanted at double speed. Even those not involved have said they stay far away […]
The minister’s pen proved mightier than any sword in the Immigration Department. Testimony from various officers showed that a minister’s recommendation, whether for passport, visa or nationality, carried significant weight with the Department’s workers, even if the rest of the application was flimsy at best in terms of the truth. The nationality report by the […]
Tonight, well-known criminal figure Stanley Moore was handed down another prison sentence after he changed his not guilty plea to guilty for attempted robbery and wounding against a seventy-three-year-old businessman and his friend. Moore is already serving a nine-year prison term for robbing a woman. After he changed his plea to avoid trial, he got […]
In a surprise statement, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Cheryl-Lynn Vidal has made scathing remarks against those who mismanaged the investigation of Dorian Pakeman, the Director of the Government Press Office. In what turned out to be a sensational turn of events, Pakeman walked into a magistrate court on the morning of May twenty-sixth and […]
P.U.P. leader John Briceño saw charges of Negligent Harm, Failure to Report an Accident and Driving a Vehicle without Due Care and Attention tossed out of the Orange Walk Magistrate’s Court today. He had been charged in February of 2015 based on a report made by Christopher Hendricks, the driver for cross-town political rival Gaspar […]
A Corozal Free Zone employee who in August 2011 was accused of raping a sixteen-year-old minor has been granted a retrial. Thirty-six-year-old Antonio Gutierrez was convicted of raping the minor and sentenced to eight years before Justice Herbert Lord in the Orange Walk Supreme Court. The decision of his verdict was unanimous, but the judges […]
Twenty-one years for manslaughter….that’s the sentence handed down today by the Court of Appeal to Osmar Sabido Junior. He was convicted in April 2016 of the murder of his common-law wife, Christie Carrasco of Orange Walk. The stabbing incident occurred at the couple’s home where he stabbed her more than once on February twenty-eight 2011. […]
Justice was swift this morning for a father of three in the lower court. Ernie Zelaya was fined ten thousand dollars and sentenced to three years behind bars for the offense of drug trafficking when he appeared in the court room of Senior Magistrate Sharon Fraser. On Friday evening, in Hattieville, police made the […]
In the Magistrate Court today, Ballistic Examiner, Orlando Vera learned his fate and it was not good news. Vera was found guilty of abetment to pervert the course of justice and sent behind bars pending sentencing. His case was heard last week by Chief Magistrate Anne Marie Smith, who gave her decision in a seven-page […]
Guatemalan national Lazaro Rafael Zaldivar Lopez has yet to pay a fine of three thousand dollars and remains in prison over the weekend. He changed a plea of not guilty to a single count of possession of a false document to guilty before Magistrate Carlon Mendoza. On May twenty-fourth, Lopez was found with a Social […]
Forty-seven-year-old Florencio Pop who was charged with the February, 2012 chopping murder of Felix Cucul Ich in Bladden Village, in Southern Belize, was sentenced in the Dangriga Supreme court earlier this week. This came after Pop changed his not guilty plea of murder to guilty of manslaughter in the presence of his attorney, Oscar Selgado. By so doing, Pop received a […]
Well-known street figure Kendis Flowers appeared in court today where he was arraigned for the attempted murder of two police officers. According to police, Flowers fired as many as five shots at two Police Constables in the early hours of Sunday morning. The officers had to seek cover and escaped uninjured. The incident happened on […]
Judge Barrow’s departure to the seat of the CCJ leaves behind a vacuum, as not only was the venerable attorney government’s chief legal counsel; he is also recognized as its best. But there are pending government cases, including legal matters involving the Ashcroft Group which has given notice that it will be presenting a bill […]
Wednesday’s public hearings of the Senate Special Select Committee were dominated by a woman whose name never appeared in the Auditor General’s Special Report on Immigration 2011-2013. But Alvarene Burgess was a fountain of information as to her personal dealings with Ministers of Government on visa recommendations. She started her testimony with a bombshell – […]
While Edmond Castro was Alvarene Burgess’ main contact, on a few occasions, she had to go elsewhere to get recommendations when he was out of the country. Once, she turned to Minister of Trade and Investment Erwin Contreras when she needed a group of Asians recommended for their visas to be approved. On two other […]
Burgess testified that, to her knowledge, no visa for which she obtained a minister’s recommendation was rejected. This buttressed previous testimony that Immigration staff considered a minister’s intervention tantamount to approval from on high and passed on the files without serious consideration of the worthiness of the applicants. Burgess also stated that even after the […]
Twenty-three-year-old Kareem Harvey, a resident of Poison Wood Street in Belmopan, has been charged with Aggravated Burglary in reference to a 2016 government-owned Toyota Hilux, stolen from an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the registrar officer of the Pesticide Control Board in Central Farm, Cayo, as she arrived at her house last […]
The Senate Select Inquiry on the Immigration Department resumed today in Belmopan. And after going toe-to-toe with former friend and Government Minister Edmond Castro in the courts and on this television station, whistleblower Alvarene Burgess appeared before the Senate Special Select Committee. This despite Senator Aldo Salazar’s position that there was no need for her […]
Burgess told the senate panel that she learned that the U.S. Embassy had at least two recordings of her conversations with Castro and other persons whom she could not recall. That further frightened her into stopping her activities and eventually coming forward when the Penner scandal broke and she heard the Prime Minister say that […]
But why was Alvarene Burgess recruited into the visa recommendation scheme? Was it because she had access to the top players? Committee Chair Aldo Salazar repeatedly asked, but Burgess’ answer remained the same: a conversation between the other players in the ring left her on the hook. Alvarene Burgess, Whistleblower “I am assuming that […]
