And the Minister reiterated the ComPol's comments. He stated that the officers were operating based on a tip and commended the cops for searching the vessel, since the department believes that the reason it was stashed there was so that the police wouldn't look.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"It's a very unfortunate situation that can happen to any citizen of Belize regardless of the position that you hold. It could happen to members of the media and I'm certain that you would likewise hope that the police investigate the matter in the way that they did in the case of Minister Perez's boat. From all the circumstances, all the facts of the case, it is clear that police received a tip based on suspicious individuals who had been traversing the area, and so it wouldn't have been just a random search of Minister Perez's boat, it was based on information provided by a member of the public that the police were able to go on the boat and locate the drugs. And so it's a good thing in the sense that it was located prior to Minister Perez even using the vessel because from all the information, it had been months before he had actually used the vessel and so it's not a situation in which the police had pulled over Minister Perez in the course of using his vessel, like the Commissioner rightly pointed out, if you take your vessel to a mechanic and it has been months since you've actually had access to it, it is very difficult to create any sort of nexus and the likelihood of the drug peddlers actually using a Minister's vessel is very high because they figure that is a safe stash spot for them because police would never search a Minister's vessel and so I want to commend the officers acting on the tip that they had received to be able to locate and confiscate the drugs."
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