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Today, she let us into her office on her last day there - where she told us how she feels on leaving after 18 months, and squarely answered questions about lands parceled out during her tenure to her siblings and to political friends. Here's her sit down with Jules Vasquez:..

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"It's your last day of work in this office."

Dr. Carla Barnett, Last day as Min. of Natural Resources
"Yes it is and I am cleaning up."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"It's been 16 months. How does it feel today?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"It doesn't feel any way. I am in transition and what I am trying to accomplish with Minister Hugo Patt is a smooth transition."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"You have to have an emotional feeling as well when you are making such a transition."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"Well I've said to staff that it will give me a lot more time, because this is a ministry that's very demanding."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"The day before your departure, the opposition newspaper drops a bomb, so to speak, impugning against your integrity and suggesting that much like the allegations against your principal or the principal UDP minister of Natural Resources, the man who was here for the longest, Minister Vega. You came here and you enriched and vested your friends and family with land holdings. How do you reply to that?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"Not at all. That is absolutely untrue Jules, because what is represented in the media is essentially taking facts and stretching them in ways that make them untrue. In the case of the caye, for example. I showed you, those were never approved. They never were."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"The allegation is that you are approving these and the prime minister got wind of it and said okay she has to go."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"No, absolutely not. And this is not the first time that had come to me applications for permission to survey cayes, that when you out the several bits and pieces together, they do comprised of a full caye and I could never approve that. It's happened before they had come to me and I..."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So you approved the Colson Caye? Did you intend to do it?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"Why would I do that?"

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"I just have to ask. But other allegations are made and I have told you these have reached me as well. You have people talking out there and people within the UDP who have told me that, well "neat and clean" Miss Carla, you know she gave her brother 20 plus acres."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"25, actually it came to 26.7 or something like that when the survey was actually completed."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"And that she gave her sister 2 lots in Sarteneja."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"It's one."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"1427 and 1428."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"No, 1427 belongs to somebody and 1428 belongs to somebody. So there is a little space between there that the commissioner found and showed my sister when she was here."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Explain how your siblings came into those lands while you were minister."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"My brother had a lease of 25 acres of land along the Northern Highway near Biscayne Village. He had gotten this in 1996 and between 1996 and last year, he was not able to get permission to survey or even somebody from the lands department to go with him to identify where this land is supposed to be. So he asked, when I became minister - he asked what can he do, so I said to him, well the lease is expired, but you have paid on it. So that is some interest in your lease. So I arrange for him to come and meet with the commissioner of lands and he advised him on what the steps were that he needed to take if he wanted to survey that land or if he wanted to be relocated elsewhere since that land was a little bit out of his way now. And so they agreed first that he would need to pay all his arrears. So he paid his arrears up to the date and he applied for a relocation. He asked if a piece of land could be identified in the area of Boom, because that's where my mom has 2 lots and the lots are his and he wanted a piece of agricultural land close to that and so that was identified."

"He went and did his survey, he paid for his survey and then the file came to me for me to approve a relocation from one plot to another plot which was done."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Would you say that you use your force or the importance of your office to push it through?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"Then I would have to say that for all the people I did that for."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"However, the case with your sister is not as straightforward. Your sister, she got 1 lot you say in Sarteneja. Explain how this came to be and why you don't feel that it is a dubious land deal or some shady..."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"It's not a land deal. You are living in that time when we use to have land deals, not about less than 3 acres of land. We were talking about hundreds of acres of land and many different parcels of land. We are talking about one piece of land relatively small. My sister is a Belizean, she lives abroad. She is looking to retire and she was visiting as she visits from time to time to look after my mom and she was around and we were discussing retirement and in its the context of retirement that the idea of a piece of land came up and she applied. Like any other Belizean she applied."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So again, did you use the force of your office to expedite it, because the average person out there would say well I applied to, but I applied 15 years ago and I didn't get anything yet. I applied when UDP won and I haven't gotten anything. It's not a straightforward process."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"It's not a straightforward process because we make it not straightforward."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So then the question stands, did you use the force or weight of your office to just push things along, because if things don't push along they languish in the system?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"Often times they do. In that particular case, I don't accept the applications. It went through the proper process and yes it may have been a quicker process, but it's not a process that onto anyway illegal."

And while she defended those leased lands for family members - what about those on Caye Caulker parceled off to political friends, namely Leila Peyrefitte and Romel Berges?

Again, Barnett said there was nothing special about those:

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"The land on Caye Caulker with Leila Peyrefitte, Searenity Limited, I believe was a company involved. Explain to me what went into that, because we know that Leila is an active supporter of you in Freetown as others in her party."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"The honest truth is that I was looking for that file this morning. I haven't been able to put my hands on it. Files have a way of disappearing to remind myself of the absolute facts. So I have not been able to find that file, but I will tell you what my recollection is. If I find anything that I need to correct later on, I can correct. That application is not a new or any recent application as just came in and just being processed. There was a request directly from her to apply for permission to survey a portion of land in Caye Caulker. So she applied, went through the process like everybody else, had to do what she needed to do, got her permission to survey which I gave to her. It was not anything that we did today and tomorrow. No. It went through its process, went downstairs into the survey department, got its stuff sorted out..."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Okay, so now the suggestion is that the date the shuffle is announced, you signed off on this 1904 parcel for searenity that same day after 5 o' clock - like it has to happen now. That's the information we got."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"That file was actually sitting on my desk and I can probably pull up my computer I can tell you exactly when the file comes, because I tend to leave cabinet, come over and sign until late. You know how many files I signed that day?"

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"I don't."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"A hundred plus files I signed that day. This is one among the hundred plus I signed that day."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Was this something of special urgency or attention to you?"

Dr. Carla Barnett
"That, nor the other hundred plus files I signed that day."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Now 1904 is her parcel."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"I have no idea what the number is. That I don't know."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"And then adjoining that is 1905. I have it here and that is Rommel Berges."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"I met that application in the system when I became minister. That's not an application that it may have been approved in my time, but it came in before."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"But now the cleared suggestion is here that here you are sitting in this office and you are known for your integrity and your transparency. But you are helping out your UDP friends."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"But he had land there before and that part that was added to it was to allow him I think to be able to access the sea, because he may have been landlocked or something like that. I would have to check the files and I couldn't locate the file this morning, but if you have a copy of the survey would show that his land behind it would have been without access."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"These acreages for UDP well-connected personalities Berges and Leila Peyrefitte, is it something that you paid any special attention to or say I must reward my friends - my Freetown friends."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"If that were the case, they would have gotten those things from 2017. Those things took a year to process because they went through their processing."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"Now the allegation also is that you did the approvals in a single day - the application and the lease approval for Rommel Berges - you did it in a single day in May of this year."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"The way the system works is that you apply sometimes for a lease and a permission to survey the same time. When the survey comes in and its approved, the application to lease comes to you along with the survey and so it's not unusual. But at the end of the day I don't process files. Files are processed by the public officers in the ministry and they are the ones who we have to get to process the files that eventually comes to me for signature."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"However, that is why these files came out. I believe it came from people within your own UDP who are saying okay she doesn't deals with files, but she deals with her people files, with Freetown, she deals with Rommel and Leila."

Dr. Carla Barnett
"No, but I showed you that those things went way back expect I will admit the one with my sister who just happen to be visiting."

On Monday's news we'll have more form Dr. Barnett when she responds to the characterization that she was a Cabinet bully.