Former data entry clerk at the Immigration Department, Erwin Robinson, spent six years in the Public Service, five of those in Immigration, until he was suspended over the Won Hong Kim case. The jailed South Korean businessman was the recipient of Belizean nationality and a passport half-way across the world in Taiwan until a scheme […]
They have been flying under the radar, but today months after they were charged for setting a bonfire at the BelCan Bridge, a group of activists went back to court on what was their final appearance. They soon exited the courtroom of Magistrate Carlon Mendoza freed of charges due to lack of evidence. The COLA […]
Twenty-six-year-old Elijah Burke has been ordered a psychiatric evaluation after appearing in Magistrate’s Court earlier today to face a charge of murder. The younger sibling of Julian Burke was detained by Belize City police on Monday night, following a deadly chopping incident on Sunday at his sister’s residence in the Kings Park area. In court […]
Back to the senate inquiry… earlier we shared with you Erwin Robinson’s recollection of the day “Won Hong Kim” purportedly visited the Immigration Department to take his passport picture. But as we all know, he was never actually here and a different photograph of Kim wound up in the passport, one with a shadow over […]
Robinson’s inability to explain the Kim caper haunts him, as he was unable to hold a job in the Public Service following his suspension. But as he was shown photographs of the doctored image of Kim and the real image, he was able to tell the difference and concluded that there had been a switch. […]
In October 2015, Judge Troadio “John” Gonzalez ruled that three Belize City men accused of the 2012 shooting murder of B.D.F. Soldier James Noralez had no case to answer. The trio Tyrone Meighan, Brandon Baptist and Orel Leslie Junior were freed after Judge Gonzalez concluded that the evidence the prosecution relied on was circumstantial evidence […]
“We will appeal…we don’t think that judgment can stand.” So said Prime Minister Dean Barrow on January twenty-first, 2016, upon hearing that the Supreme Court had awarded Titan International Securities nearly nine million Belize dollars in damages. The award is in respect of a raid at their Matalon Business Center offices on Coney Drive in […]
A shop lifter who was caught in Public’s Supermarket on Saturday stealing a ball of Dutch cheese was charged with theft and was luckily sentenced to a three-month suspended sentence. Carlos Vasquez of the Kings Park area in Belize City was also ordered to stay out of trouble for the next year or else he […]
A nine-year-old boy who was harmed late last week was back in school today despite injuries he sustained allegedly inflicted by a Chinese businessman. The child’s mother, Darlene Morris alleges that the owner of Home Ever Supermarket beat-up her son, Arden Garbutt. In an interview outside the courtroom today, Morris claimed the young student was […]
After more than two weeks in trial, the case of thirty-year-old, Brandon Taylor, charged with the May 2012 shooting murder of Kaylon Matura, came to a close. And it is the second time that Taylor has beaten a murder rap. Matura was shot on Central American Boulevard, Belize City, not far from his home. Taylor was […]
The two men accused of the gruesome murder of eighteen-year-old Keonia Ara were formally arraigned in the Belmopan Magistrate’s Court this morning. Teakettle residents, twenty-two year old Jaime Patnett and twenty year old Shaylon Santos appeared before a Magistrate and have been remanded until May fifteenth, 2017. Shaylon Santos is the older brother of Shemar […]
Rodolfo Bol is the Immigration Department’s former System Manager, and current I.T. Manager. He has been with the Department since 2004. He manages the passport machine system and border management system, as well as the Department’s internal network which connects the regional offices and international embassies from the U.S. to Taiwan. But Auditor General Dorothy […]
Bol was also questioned on the most infamous example of how the Belize Passport and Information System was breached during the tenure covered by the Auditor General’s Report from 2011 to 2013. That is South Korean fugitive Won Hong Kim, who made a desperate bid to obtain Belizean nationality and a passport to claim citizenship […]
Twenty-year-old Stephen Mejia of Antelope Street in Belize City is behind bars after he was sentenced to one year in prison for keeping an unlicensed firearm and ammunition. In September of last year, Mejia was busted with a loaded nine millimeter firearm with nine live rounds of ammunition. According to two officers attached to the […]
After nine months behind bars, forty-six-year-old Santiago Cholom is home free, following a decision by the Court of Appeal to have him released due to a number of errors during his trial. Cholom’s attorney, Oswald Twist, successfully argued on several grounds, despite the fact that Cholom was convicted of carnal knowledge of a thirteen-year-old minor […]
Two of the scheduled three witnesses for today’s public hearings of the Senate Special Select Committee on Immigration testified. They are current information technology manager Rodolfo Bol and former database administrator, now Acting Director of the Central Information Technology Office (CITO), Francisco Gonzalez. Bol, as former systems administrator for the Department, was in charge at […]
Bol disputed the Auditor General’s assertion that inactive users were not removed from the system under his tenure. He pointed out that he and his successor as Systems Administrator, Georgia Bowen, held sole power to change the passwords and user roles of fellow Department employees, but in practice they only changed passwords and occasionally user […]
Back to the senate hearings…The second witness at today’s public hearing, Francisco Gonzalez, was a busy man for most of 2013 and early in 2014. He was point man for the Audit team investigating the Immigration Department for their special audit and had been working with them around the clock as a database administrator with […]
Gonzalez spent most of the session leading Senators through an explanation of how technological failures with the machine readable passport system were an underlying cause of the problems within the Immigration Department at the time of the audit report. With news of the Government’s plans to purchase a new machine and the concurrent problems with […]
Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin has reserved judgment in the case of the Belize Bank Limited and the Government of Belize after hearing submissions from both parties. A second day of litigation resumed this morning in the Supreme Court where a cadre of lawyers, led by senior counsels Eamon Courtenay and Denys Barrow, concluded their arguments. […]
The question of whether or not the case is deliberately being retried is also central to the argument. According to Barrow, government decided at the eleventh hour to challenge the enforcement proceedings. Despite being able to mount a successful legal challenge, the Ashcroft Group is seeking enforcement in another jurisdiction. Barrow says that is a […]
Courtenay maintains that government took the decision of the CCJ to the U.S. jurisdiction and requested that the enforcement not be granted. Barrow, on the other hand, says that the decision of the high court is being undermined by the actions of the Belize Bank attorney. Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Belize Bank Ltd. “My […]
Interdicted police officer, Corporal Darrel Usher, who over the weekend was allegedly busted with a huge amount of cannabis, was today arraigned after a number of issues delayed his arraignment on Monday at the Belize City Magistrate’s Court. At ten o’clock this morning, the officer appeared before Chief Magistrate Anne Marie Smith and was read […]
Austin DeCosta was found guilty of aggravated assault upon a woman. The forty-three-year-old resident of Caye Caulker appeared in court today to answer to the charge for an incident that happened back in September 2016. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. The victim indicated that she was afraid of testifying […]
Attorneys for the Belize Bank, as well as the Government of Belize, filed into the courtroom of Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin shortly before eleven o’clock this morning. The litigants were there in an attempt to convince the presiding justice of the Supreme Court why he ought to or ought not to dismiss an injunction granted […]
