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The Belize Times
Established 1957
13 NOVEMBER 2016 | ISSUE NO: 5019
The Truth Shall Make You Free
www.belizetimes.bz | $1.00
BAM BRIGGIDIM BUF!
Barrow & Espat’s SuperBOMB EXPLODES! Wednesday, November 9, 2016 Those days of an inebriated Minister of Education Patrick Faber boasting about spending Petrocaribe monies on rum and tacos and pibil are long gone. The days of wild, frenzied and drunken gyrating to the beat of all the things that “Petrocaribe gih mih” likewise are long gone. But as we go to press there is confirmation that the indigestion from those excesses is here to stay. A terse release from the Belize Press Office, sans niceties, informed Belizeans that Prime Minister Dean Barrow is currently in New York for “consultations with the Government of Belize’s legal and financial advisers on various pending matters.” If that seems vague, it is most likely deliberately so. They say when it rains it pours and Belize is very likely to get very, very wet. The government is fully aware of the absolutely treacherous road ahead yet no-one from GOB is willing to acknowl-
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COP ACCUSED OF BRUTAL BEAT-DOWN
Wednesday, 09 November 2016 On Monday, November 7th at 9:02 am, a Facebooker posted several raw pictures to social media. They were of her nephew, 21-year-old Hugo Noh, a resident of Guinea Grass Village, Orange Walk. He bore gruesome signs of violence particularly to the head and left shoulder. The message was in
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NO SHAME IN THE HUSTLE GAME
Thursday, November 10, 2016 Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez says there is no conflict of interest in the Department of Human Services, direct under HIS portfolio as Minister of Social Development, moving into a building he owns at the corner of Central American Boulevard and the George Price Highway. According to Martinez, “I don’t have no difficulty with that, nothing illegal, nothing immoral.” Of course it’s no surprise that “Boots” Martinez has no difficulty with that since it is his building, after all, and the rent paid by his Department would be doing into his pocket. But Martinez clarifies that it is NOT his building. That building, he says, belongs to his daughter. “The building at the roundabout, that building fortunate for me that building is for my daughter,” claims Martinez.
BRING BACK THE MONEY! Monday, November 7, 2016 Sixteen days after Minister of Natural Resources Vanessa Retreage indicated that her Ministry would be making attempts to recover monies paid to Andre Vega and Sharon Pitts, action was taken. Late Friday evening, a release from the Ministry claimed that on October 31st demand letters were sent to Vega and Pitts instructing them to return $800,000, $400,000 each that they were paid in “compensation” in 2015. The Vega/Pitts scandal came to light after documents were leaked from the Ministry of Natural Resources. Those documents chronicled the particular case which saw Pitts and Vega, the son of then Minister of Natural Resources, receive hundreds of thousands in compensation after both were given title to land which was privately owned. For that “error,” Pitts received $400,000 though she had paid just a
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