An audit called the "Special Report on the Issuance of National Land Lease and Titles in the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment between September 2007 and February of 2008" was tabled in the house of representative son Friday. The title may be long but the report is even longer, clocking in at 419 pages and detailing over a thousand irregular transactions which were reviewed by the Auditor General's office.
They found many, many things amiss - and tonight Jules Vasquez looks at a few of them:....
Jules Vasquez Reporting
The report is so voluminous that it defies easy generalization - there's so much that defied procedure during that period that the document is a catalogue of - if not corruption - certainly abject mismanagement.
The auditor's summary of findings for chapter three shows "practices contrary to established documented guidelines." For example "lands were approved for sale without evidence of any submission by the applicant." Also noted were cases where procedures to facilitate land transaction occurred with a few days.
The commissioner of lands and survey noted that there was a rush for processing application between late 2007 and early 2008 - and quote, "during this period important processes were bypassed." Even more outstanding were cases like this one for Jamela Janmohammed where the application for over 10 acres on Bracillette Caye was made on the 20th. Of January and incredible it was approved 5 days before by Minister Florencio Marin on the 15th of January.
The minister's fiat grant was signed by the end of January, just days before the general election. The same thing was done for a company called Resort Investment Limited that got its purchase of 300 acres of Turneffe Island approved on the fifth of June, 2007 when the application was not sent in until the 24th of June.
And while those applications came late, this case for 25 acres on Turneffe Caye for Marjorie Martinez, no application was seen and the price was discounted 25% to 4,875 dollars for those 25 acres.
Tomorrow we'll have more from the report as there is an uninterrupted list of 350 pages with land transactions - which all had at least one irregularity and most of them had very many defects...
