And From Mayor Wagner's dispute with the City Administrator, we turn back to Opposition Leader and the allegations of land corruption that the ruling United Democratic Party has made against him.
At the Wind up of the last budget debate, Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who's the Minister of Natural Resources, read from a long list of land holdings that the Opposition Leader John Briceño and his family has.
Some of those lands have been in the Briceño family for decades, but others were acquired during his tenure as the Minister of Natural Resources.
Land documents have emerged which call into question some of these holdings, and the method by which they were acquired. The allegation is that Briceno secured lands for himself and his relatives while he was Minister.
We asked the Opposition Leader about it:
Daniel Ortiz
"What about those documents which they suggest that you gifted yourself and your brother land when you were minister of natural resources - a minister's grant? These acumens say that you gave yourself and your brother land."
Hon. John Briceño - Leader of the Opposition
"Respectfully you were not listening to what I just said. Those are lands that we bought from individuals in Progresso. When you buy a lease, it was abandoned cane lands and we bought those leases from the gentleman, from the Lino family and so then eventually we applied for the land and then that is how we managed to get the land. It is not land that the government gave us directly; we bought it from somebody, the rights to that land."
Daniel Ortiz
"So can you say categorically that you and your family were not unjustly enriched with land when you were minister of natural resources?"
Hon. John Briceño
"(Laugh) you want to make I laugh. No, I did not get in there to enrich myself or to enrich my family and the prime minister knows the records are there. He can produce whatever records and we can show that I did not go in there to enrich any of my family members or myself."
The UDP issued a release on these land holdings, quote, "calling for a proper investigation into the land transactions that were conducted during the….Musa and Briceno Government of 1998 – 2008." End quote.
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