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Min. Nat. Sec. Renting From PM's Law Firm, Barrow and Williams
posted (July 7, 2020)
Today's police press conference announcing the State of Emergency for Southside Belize City gave the press an opportunity to ask Police Minister Michael Peyrefitte about the plan for the Scenes Of Crime Personnel.

Reports are the Government is entertaining the possibility of renting office spaces from Barrow and Williams, the Prime Minister's law firm building, which is located on Albert Street. The media asked Peyrefitte about that today, and he said that Gian Cho, the Director of the National Forensic Science Service, made the informed choice:

Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Minister of National Security
"It's not a rumor, its a fact, I toured it yesterday. I was invited by the Scenes of Crime personnel to tour it yesterday. It was the place that provided the best space for the amount of rent that we would have to pay. The people who work there are really excited about the, finally they're having the space to work in and they feel like they can produce much more efficiently given where they are working now. I am sorry that Musa and Balderamos doesn't have an ex office space that they could have rented to make it not look political, but that was the space available, that was the convenient place that we could rent for the job we wanted to do and so we didn't think about it that way. We needed the space and we got the space."

Reporter
"Barrow and Williams, this is the prime minister's business and business partner's business will be paid something about $6,000 a month for the rental of that space. I mean that has to bring up some form of conflict of interest at least in the general public. It doesn't look good."

Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Minister of National Security
"We were very well aware of that, but the different spaces - that was certainly not the first choice I can tell you that. The director wanted some place else, but then it became unavailable after a time. There were some other spaces available that they said was not suitable for their purposes. The space was chosen strictly by the director, director Cho - that was the place that he and his team picked. We had nothing to do with the choice of that place. I think Mr. Barrow will finally know tonight when he watches this that his place is being rented."

According to the Minister of Police, and the Police Commissioner, the Scenes Of Crime personnel will move their base of operations from the Queen Street Police Station to their new office space at Barrow and Williams.

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