By Zoila Palma: Interim Minister of Home Affairs Julius Espat says that the optics of the alleged payments made to Mira-family related businesses during his time as Minister of Defence is “difficult.”
“I spoke to Minister Mira bout half hour ago and he was in fairly good spirits and he’s responsive to letting the audit do its job and he believes that everything has been done above the board. I don’t have much more to say to him except to tell him he’s a colleague of mine and I hope that he can do the best to participate in the audit and to make sure that his name is cleared, that’s all you can hope for. But as I told you the last time, we will get more information tomorrow and we will see how to move from there. The optics is a difficult one to justify no doubt, you’ve been pretty good at zooming into the details so if the information is there then what can one do? It’s best to have the authorities deal with it if it has to be done that way,” Espat explained during an interview with 7News Belize.
Espat says that he noticed some of the payments were done under contracts but the perception of nepotism cannot be ignored.
“I saw some that were done under contracts and it went through so I saw where the need was but the optics of the nepotism is what you see, what everybody sees apart from the way it was done, the end result is the same, family members benefitting so people will look at it in a different way but there’s no way to try and justify it, that’s why I said you can’t put it under the rug, let’s look at it, let’s analyze and let’s be transparent about it,” Espat explained.
Espat has indicated that as the interim Minister, he is prepared to work with everyone in the Ministry.
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By Zoila Palma: Interim Minister of Home Affairs Julius Espat says that the optics of the alleged payments made to Mira-family related businesses during his time as Minister of Defence is “difficult.” “I spoke to Minister Mira bout half hour ago and he was in fairly good spirits and he’s responsive to letting the audit
The post Minister Espat says perception of nepotism cannot be ignored appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.