Supreme Court to Miami judge: back off
It’s the best news that Belmopan has received in a long time: a clear and decisive ruling by Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh that a temporary injunction issued by a U.S. Federal Court in Miami placing Jeffrey Prosser back in charge of B.T.L. is neither enforceable nor effective in Belize.
The Supreme Court ruling gives the Belize Government some breathing room to try and craft a compromise that will balance the interests of Prosser, Michael Ashcroft and a popular local BTL management group, Sunrise Limited. That attempt may prove easier said than done but for the moment Prime Minister Said Musa gets to savour a rare legal and political victory. According to the C.J.’s written judgement, the controlling law is the Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgement Act, Chapter 171. Under this law the injunction ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages on Friday is unenforceable for a number of reasons, including: it is in interim and not a final order; the U.S.A. is not among those countries covered by the benefits of the law; and the jurisdiction claimed by the Miami Court applies to the share pledge agreement, not the sales agreement which appears to be the contract at issue. The Chief Justice further noted that he is “troubled by the fact that a foreign court whose jurisdiction has not been clearly established before me, could issue orders as to the removal and reinstatement of directors and the sale of shares of a company that is Belizean, incorporated in Belize and whose headquarters and operations are based here in Belize.”
That said, it remains to be seen what G.O.B.’s next move will be. Documents published on the website freebelize.org purport to show the details of a proposed deal under which Belmopan will sell nearly fifteen million U.S. dollars worth of shares–around fifteen percent of the company–to Michael Ashcroft in exchange for him dropping all his London and Belize based legal actions. This would allow Ashcroft to appoint two directors and keep the majority shareholder in some kind of check. Government would presumably be free to sell the rest of the shares to Sunrise or other local entities with access to U.S. dollars. The wild card in all this, of course, is Jeffrey Prosser, who according to the script is supposed to cooperate by selling his twenty-six percent stake in the company. What he is supposed to do with the white elephant called Intelco, for which he paid millions is not being mentioned. But for now that’s Prosser’s problem. Until his highly paid lawyers can come up with a way to turn the tables on Musa and company, the boys in Belmopan will be playing hard at “Let’s make a deal”.
