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His plane landed at the Phillip Goldson International airport about 8:30 this morning where an elated Gus Tabony disembarked the morning flight from Roatan Honduras. He was happy to be back in Belize and glad to be out of Honduras.

We met him outside the airport where he recounted the incident. Yesterday he cleared his name in the Honduran court and today he hoped to do the same in Belize's court of public opinion.

August Tabony - Cleared of Money Laundering
"The situation in Roatan was a disaster for me. I made a mistake. it could have been cleaned up in about 30 minutes but the prosecutor tried to make a much bigger thing about it and under the laws that they charged me, I had to prove that my money was not from drug trafficking or something like that and we had no problem proving it but then it took 6 days to have the hearing and as soon as we had the hearing, the judge released us. I have no reason to hang my head in shame. I was charged with a ridiculous crime and anybody that knows me, knows that I've worked hard for 40 yrs. building these business and we even showed that in Belize in 1982 we started our company here and in Roatan it was like 15 yrs. ago we started and we built from very small and yes we do good business now. In Roatan we do over a million US a year and here we do around 3 million US a year and so the 16,000 thousand dollars was not a big deal. Yes I should have file the paper. I do not deny that, but there's another thing that people should know. In Roatan, in Honduras you cannot deposit in some banks, 20 dollar bills. They have rules because they think that is the bill of the drug trafficker. so some banks would not accept any and some banks would only accept like 500 a day and over the Christmas holidays we took in over 4,000 thousand dollars in 20's that we couldn't deposit there so I was also bringing that back to deposit here and would have declared it here."

Emanuel Pech
"How does this incident affect your business in the other region?"

August Tabony - Cleared of Money Laundering
"So far I don't know, this is the 1st day I'm leaving Roatan, in the last 6 days I've been in detention so I don't know if I'm going to run into any problems with banks, if they're going to say you've been charged. Yes I've been charged but I've been cleared or I wouldn't be here."

Tabony owns several businesses in Honduras including 6 gift stores and 2 restaurants. But after this incident Tabony says he is considering pulling his investments out of that country.

August Tabony - Cleared of Money Laundering
"Today I have a very negative feeling about Roatan. I have a lot of investments there and I would really question going and putting anymore. In fact I would like to get it out, but I don't want to dislike the whole country just for the bad treatment I received by prosecutor. I'm walking proud I have nothing to be ashamed of and anybody that knows me, knows that I'm not involved with illicit businesses nor do I associate with people that do illicit business."

Reporting for 7 news Emanuel Pech

According to Tabony the return of the money will take about a month to process. When that is completed he will only get back two thirds of the original amount. One third will be kept as a fine for failing to file the form.