So, does the Government have the proper legal footing to go after the return of these Government funds which were paid out in these questionable land compensation deals? As you probably heard, Prime Minister Dean Barrow and new Natural Resources Minister Vanessa Retreage want Andre Vega to refund that 400,000 dollars he got for that duplicate title which should never have been issued in the first place.
We asked the Prime Minister's brother, Denys Barrow, for his legal opinion on matters like this. He said that if the Government can prove that the compensation was improper, and due to some sort of fraud, they perfectly entitled to go after the return of those monies:
Denys Barrow, SC - Attorney
"When for instance compensation has been improperly paid, where for instance a person claims compensation and it turns out afterwards that the claim was improperly made as in an extreme case, it was a fraudulent claim that the person ought never to have received compensation at all. In that situation it is entirely open to the government. It is permitted by law for a claim to be made to recoup the compensation paid. Because anything which happens as a result of a fraud is a nullity."
11 days ago, the Government revealed that an audit is being done by the Auditor General Dorothy Bradley of the compensation cases. All payments for land compensations have been halted until the review process is complete.
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