Tonight, 7News continues its investigation into overpriced or substandard firearms supplied to the BDF. This time we're looking at the civilian-grade Taurus brand rifles which the BDF received while three former soldiers were at the top of the Ministry of Defence: Florencio Marin Jr. as Minister, Oscar Mira as Minister of State, and former Brigadier General Dario Tapia as CEO.
Combined, they had decades of military service under their belts-so why did the soldiers end up with civilian-grade assault rifles under their tenure? And did the Prime Minister know about it even before the sub-ten-thousand-dollar payment scandal was revealed at the Ministry of Defence in early June? Jules Vasquez has more:
120 Taurus M4 carbine rifles were acquired by the BDF in or around 2023.
According to the soldiers we spoke to, the Taurus rifles they received were civilian, not military-grade, and would get hot during firing-so much so that none of the soldiers wanted to use them.
But why were these subpar rifles purchased? And from whom?
Well, around the same time, these are a small fraction of the payments made to a gun dealer named Pew Pew.
We do know that the sub-ten-thousand-dollar payments caught the attention of the PM from before the 2025 elections-which is likely why Florencio Marin was not brought back as Minister of Defence.
Until the PM had no other choice 8 months later and he had to give him back the portfolio.
At the time, we didn't know about Kukulcan-which is co-owned by Marin's divisional secretary.
At that time, we did raise the concern of those sub-10k payments-and the Prime Minister struggled to answer:
November 18, 2025
Jules Vasquez:
"I would like to ask about the Minister of Defence, the returning Minister of Defence. I have independently received information that there was the issuance of a plenitude, a plethora of sub-ten-thousand-dollar contracts when he was minister. I can't say under whose hand they were issued, it is certainly suspicious, it is something we have been looking into for some time, and it happened under his tenure. Why is he being returned to a ministry when there is that blight hanging over it?"
November 18, 2025
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Yes, there have been some instances that some contracts have been given under the ten thousand (dollar threshold), but we have pointed out to the minister to ensure that we refrain from that. Many instances, the soldiers need food and the only way they can get that done is to try to quickly give those small contracts so they can quickly get the food and the supplies to the BDF. But I can assure you that that is not something that will be continued, a practice that will be continued in the Ministry of Defence."
But it is a practice that continued long after that interview, and certainly up until 2026, we were still seeing such payments being made to all kinds of connected and favored companies.
We tried to reach out to the businessman known as the principal of Pew Pew for comment, but he did not respond to our text messages. The last time we did get through to him back in mid-June, he said the sub-ten-thousand-dollar payments we showed were not related to Pew Pew-which is the vendor name and the email address on the Smart Stream screenshots.
