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 […]
The relationship between Lord Michael Ashcroft’s business concerns and Prime Minister Dean Barrow’s law firm, Barrow and Williams, retained for litigation on behalf of the Belize Bank Limited and others, is well-known. It is now confirmed that that relationship extends to the firm having shares in the former BCB Holdings, now known as Caribbean Investment […]
Senior Counsel and Senator Eamon Courtenay has come under fire from the United Democratic Party and the Government for acting on behalf of the former BCB Holdings in a Constitutional claim to the Central Bank (International Immunities) Act, despite having supported its passage in the Senate. Courtenay did express his reservations on aspects of the […]
Farmers in the Cayo and Orange Walk Districts have thousands of pounds of potatoes rotting in the fields – produce they have been unable to sell because of competing imported Mexican and contraband potatoes. On Monday, farmers in La Gracia in the Cayo District said they can’t get buyers – and then there are the […]
A jury of seven women and five men stepped into the deliberating room at just after noon today to decide the fate of three men from Cayo, who are accused jointly with the murder of eighty-two-year-old James Neal Young, who was killed in a most gruesome manner. Four and a half hours later, the verdict […]
David Miguel Banes, otherwise known as David Nanes Schnitzer, sits in a Mexican jail for white collar crimes he allegedly committed in that jurisdiction. After defrauding investors of millions of dollars and subsequently absconding to Belize, specifically San Pedro, to avoid prosecution, Banes was facilitated with a falsified Belize Nationality Certificate, as well as a […]
The Immigration and Nationality Department remains under heavy scrutiny amid the ongoing Senate Special Select Inquiry…and we’ll have that coming up. Tonight, however, there are complaints from the public that passport services have all, but come to a standstill as a result of technical difficulties being experienced with the existing machine. The system currently in […]
According to Minister of State in the Ministry of Immigration, Beverly Williams, another system has been substituted in place of the faulty passport machine which is also enabled for machine readable documents. Beverly Williams, Minister of State, Immigration “The backup plan is to look at renewal of current passports that have the scanning, that […]
If you listen to the Government, most of its problems stem from past decisions, whether by the Said Musa administrations or by Lord Michael Ashcroft. At every turn there have been attacks on both throughout the three administrations of Prime Minister Dean Barrow. In our interview on Wednesday, the British peer, who also has Belizean […]
A few weeks ago, former C.E.O. of the Ministry of Immigration, Candelaria Saldivar-Morter, mused that many unusual things happened in the Immigration Department and that there was corruption from the top to the bottom. Another example came to light in Wednesday’s public hearings where former Finance Officer Teresita Castellanos told of the unusual way in […]
Even though Prime Minister Dean Barrow continues to deny that the cut corners in the Immigration Department compromised the nationality of those registered in the run-up to the 2012 general elections, further testimony revealed that even with the greater number of applications coming in, the number of staff doing checks did not increase significantly as […]
We suspect that it hardly matters in the greater scheme of things, but both sides of the political divide have been accused of misusing the Immigration Department to their advantage, especially during election time. In 2012, the U.D.P. government swore in over two thousand new Belizeans in the run-up to general elections, which they won […]
The day-to-day operations of the Immigration and Nationality Department are coming under the microscope in the ongoing investigation. The Minister of State Beverly Williams is faced with reshaping the image of the sullied department. You would have heard Williams’ former stomping ground at the Ministry of Natural Resources described as a hotbed of corruption by […]
Coconut may be big business soon for Belize – the emerging industry is supported by the Caribbean Coconut Industry Development Project which aims to improve income and employment opportunities, food security and overall competitiveness of the Caribbean Coconut sector. At least two companies are exporting coconuts and creating opportunities for local farmers. The Minister of […]
