Last night we told you about the two Guatemalan men caught coming out of Calla Creek near the Western border with a major shipment of contraband insecticide. Well, the pair is expected to go to court tomorrow where they will face a whole bunch of charges - plus a fine of - get this - more than half a million dollars. That's because the 40 cases of "Insecticida RESPEKT" has a local market value of 171,000 dollars - and a fine of three times that would be about 510 thousand dollars.
But, that insecticide is not even registered to be sold in Belize - so it is a prohibited item - which means that there's also a significant criminal offence.
Now, obviously the two men were bringing in this costly product to sell to a large and wealthy agro-business interest. We have learned that the insecticide is used to kill sucking insects in cane fields. This volume of insecticide would be used in a five thousand acre plantation.
And while it's not hard to speculate about which enterprise or company the product might have been for, tomorrow the pair is expected to go to court alone - as they face multiple charges. And we note that they could still be offered the option to settle out of court - though that would still be a large payment they'd have to come up with.
The highly toxic insecticide will have to destroyed by the Pesticide Control Board.
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