Are you scratching your head about the many twists and turns in the Senate Special Select Committee’s public hearings over the last month or so with regard to eight visa foils that disappeared in December of 2012? We are, too even though the missing foils pale to the illegal issuance of nationalities and passports. The […]
Did the Immigration Department try to sweep the visa foils affair under the rug and turn on the man who instigated an investigation of the matter? Immigration Officer Mark Tench said as much at Wednesday’s public hearings of the Special Senate Select Committee, where he accused the Department of attempting to make him a scapegoat […]
Tench continued to enumerate his version of events at the Public Service Commission hearing for the Senators on Wednesday. He emphasized that the former C.E.O. had nothing to do with the process of argument against his continued employment with the Department and that the Commission agreed that further investigation of the matter should have been […]
In the afternoon, there was further discussion of the visa foil issue. As one of the senior men at the border during the incident, one would have expected that Vernon Leslie would have personally informed the then-Director of Immigration after being unable to gain a satisfactory response from immediate boss Edgar Cano, but no one […]
As noted, a decision was taken, later endorsed by Cano, to basically pretend as if the visas had never gone missing. It involved receiving payment from legitimate travellers seeking a visa. They were issued the numbers corresponding to the missing visas and the money went into the Government Treasury with none the wiser. Vernon Leslie’s […]
A verdict has been handed down in the Southern Session of the Supreme Court in Dangriga in relation to a highly-publicized police-involved shooting three years ago. Eighteen year old Rasheed Elijio was attempting to escape from police custody in Punta Gorda along with one Brian Garcia in May of 2013. He was hit with a […]
The Senate Special Select Committee has been actively poring through a single incident reported in the Auditor General’s Special Report on Immigration for weeks now. The more important issues of nationalities and passport granted to persons who did not meet the requirements has taken the back seat eight visa foils that somehow went missing from […]
Mark Tench also confirmed that he printed the passport for pickup to be delivered to Won Hong Kim in August of 2013 after being transferred from the Western Border office. Kim certainly did not meet the requirements and never set foot in Belize but was facilitated all the way. That illegal passport is now being […]
Tench said to the Committee that there were ways to “game” the system if one was really in desperate need of a visa. He gave an example of his time in Belize City, where he dealt with Nigerian and Ghanaian residents aiming to try to get relatives and friends to the Jewel to ultimately become […]
Immigration Officer of eighteen years’ experience, Mark Tench, appeared before the Senate Special Select Committee this morning as one of two witnesses in the inquiry on the Immigration Department. His name appears as one of the investigators into the eight missing visa foils from the Western Border office that disappeared sometime between Christmas and Boxing […]
And while that may be the biggest bombshell out of today’s public hearings, what exactly happened out west over that holiday period in 2012 has only been obliquely told. In Tench’s version of events to the Commission, he clarified the nature of the handover from the previous shift and what was the tell-tale sign that […]
The investigation widened to include other persons. According to Tench, they tried their mightiest to get the agent identified as selling the foils to Chang and Tillett to confirm other’s involvement, but only one “Khaddafi” from Corozal, known to Tench himself, came forward to assist in the investigation. Mark Tench, Former Supervisor of Immigration, […]
Tench told the Public Service Commission that his advice to Edgar Cano and Vernon Leslie to call the police in relation to the missing foils was not taken. Instead, he was brought up on disciplinary charges of misconduct in relation to violations of the Financial and Stores Orders for not properly reporting the loss of […]
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 […]
Three San Pedro police officers accused of killing a bartender on San Pedro back in March 2016 will have to stand trial at the Supreme Court for manslaughter and not murder. A preliminary inquiry concluded today with a paper committal and the trio will have to answer to the charge of manslaughter at the April […]
Tonight twenty-five-year-old Stanley Moore, a resident of Faber’s Road, Belize City is serving his first night of a nine-year sentence for robbery with a firearm imposed upon him by Magistrate Carlon Mendoza. The armed robbery occurred on September sixteenth, 2016, upon Ashley Perez who was robbed of her bag containing a cell phone, money and […]
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 […]
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 […]
A son of the late George “Junie Balls” McKenzie Senior was before the court today where he was charged jointly with well-known figure, Henry Gillett, aka “Pulu” of Majestic Alley. The duo appeared before Chief Magistrate Anne Marie Smith where Keifer McKenzie was charged with aggravated assault and use of threatening words upon Jaheel […]
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 […]
This afternoon at two o’clock, three judges of the Court of Appeal handed down a written judgment in favour of convicted prisoner, Artie Myers. The Gales Point Manatee resident was charged in November 2012 with the carnal knowledge of a young child and convicted in October 2015. Today, Justices Sir Manuel Sosa along with Christopher […]
