And while that was - at the time - described as an allegation of white collar crime - it's street crime that's been dominating the news in the past few days.
Between Thursday night and Sunday morning - less than 72 hours - 5 murders were recorded.
Today, the police commissioner addressed the media because of the spate of crime - and after giving an overview - he had one of those same old "we got this" platitudes. Jules Vasquez pressed him on it:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"These incidents I must say are isolated from each other; in the sense that the one in Mahogany Heights, the first one, we believe that that may have been somewhat gang-related; the second one in Mahogany Heights that might have some drug connection or relation. Then in Belize City, the first murder from what we have been made to understand through our investigation stem from a fight between two fathers. And then the second murder in Belize City, we are still trying to figure out what went wrong. But you'd recall that the fellow King was shot about 6 months ago at that same house around the same time and we are still trying to figure out what may have caused that incident with him and in terms of the one in Belmopan with Daniel Gutierrez, we have two persons in custody who we believe may have something to do with his death due to some previous threat that they had sent to him. Again let me say that these incidents are not gang related, its not like when you would see in the past, you have one murder and then there is a chain of murders from that one. These are isolated from each other and than makes it a bit more difficult. Belize City is not an easy place to police and again, you know that the proximity of gang members and like you rightly said the propensity for our young people for violence is an issue and we have always tried to find ways and means by which we can address those issues and try to see how we can quell tempers and angers. It is rather difficult at times, but I don't see it as an act in-fruitility. I still believe that we are gaining significant in-roads."
"You would know that the city has been relatively calm and normally after a calm, a storm comes. These things are going to manifest themselves unbeknown to us and I think what is important then is for us to make sure that we respond adequately to make sure that there is not that trend of killing in the city and I am optimistic that we are going to get there."
"You can't expect it Jules, to happen overnight. The problem that we are faced with did not happen overnight. It took place over a period of years, so why now everybody expect that you just wave a finger and everything go away."
Jules Vasquez
"You keep saying that we have it in hand, we're going to fix it, we are addressing it. You cant, it's not a problem you can fix."
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"If a situation presents itself and we are doing what we can from a policing standpoint to address it and I say that to the public, that is what we are doing. Things will never be as pretty or as ideal as we want it to be, but we must employ our best endeavour to make it as best as we can to make our people as safe as they possibly can be and we have been doing that."
