7 News Belize

PUP Says It’s Not Playing On Penner
posted (April 10, 2014)
Another full court press that the Opposition is making is against Elvin Penner, the man who has been criminally charged and arraigned for the Citizen Kim passport scandal.

5 weeks ago, Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin granted the Writ Of Mandamus which compelled Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie to re-open an investigation against Penner for his role in the issuance of the fraudulent nationality certificate and Belizean passport to the South Korean fugitive, Won Hong Kim.

Today, Fonseca told the media that time is going, and they will not wait forever to give ComPol Whylie a chance to provide disclosure. He said that if they don't see any positive movements with the investigation, they will press the court to find him in contempt:

Hon. Francis Fonseca, Leader of the Opposition
"We have a very clear and direct order from the court; the order from the Chief Justice was very clear directing the Commissioner of Police of carry out an investigation into this matter. Obviously we are limited in our ability to know fully what is taking place. It has been reported to us as you know the Commissioner did send a letter to my lawyers saying that he has completed the investigation and that the file has been handed over to the director of public persecutions, so the Commissioner's position is that he has done the investigation and that he has handed over that file. My understanding, because of course we are not getting any first hand reports from anyone, my understand is that the director of public persecutions received certain information but she did not classify what she received as an investigation file on the matter and she certainly, as I understand it, did not conclude that this represented the end of the investigation. There are many questions which remained. Certainly the biggest one as we had pointed out is how can you say you have completed an investigation into this matter when there is no statement from Elvin Penner, the man at the center of the investigation. The point is that we have on the one hand the commissioner saying that he has completed the investigation, the reports we are getting from the director of public persecutions is that that has not been satisfactorily done. We certainly as I have consistently said it is not our desire to find the commissioner in contempt and that certainly is an option which we will only exercise as a last resort and we certainly hope that that does not have to happen."

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