Assets of City Council crow footed to cover S.E.L. debt
The Belize City Council is facing hard times and it has been unable to meet a debt with Sanitation Enterprises Limited. S.E.L. closed down in January of 2008 and recently its former owner, Rupert Marin, took CitCo to court for payment of a one point seven million dollar debt through the council’s subvention from central government. And on May twenty-ninth, Justice Minnet Hafiz-Bertram delivered a seven page ruling and did not grant S.E.L. its wishes but ordered the Council to come up with a payment plan. That plan was still on the drawing board and on Tuesday and Wednesday while the Mayor was in meetings, Marshalls from the court were crow-footing the City Council assets.
Zenaida Moya Flowers, Belize City Mayor
“Their contention is that they want to ensure payment of one point seven million dollars that the council—and I when I say council it is not only necessarily our council, but whatever we inherited from the previous council, which is the majority of what is owed and what they are claiming no. Again that is something that is in contention because we’ve already written and we’ve already presented our case to cabinet. Since we do have a letter from Sales Tax Department indicating—and we got this letter this year I believe—indicating S.E.L. owes government of Belize six point something million dollars. So our strategy is one whereby we’ll be asking, we’ve already asked the central government to do one of two things. One they can join us as a co-defendant in this particular case so that six point something million dollars that Sales Tax is saying is owed to the Central Government, we will be able to offset the one point seven million dollars that S.E.L. is saying that ours and the previous council owe to them. Our central government will be able to go and garnish that six point something million dollars knowing fully well that we believe S.E.L. doesn’t have the money to pay that. So how will S.E.L. pay that six point something million dollars? If Central government does go after that six point something million dollars of which then we’ll be assisting in terms of the lesser amounts, the one point seven million dollars, they just write off the one point something million dollars and the central government may see it fit to likewise do the same.”
Jose Sanchez
“In addition to the North Front Street Office, what other assets are they crow footing?”
Zenaida Moya Flowers
“What they have tagged, tagged. They have done an inventory. Again it’s also a legal matter because we can go ahead and request an injunction especially in lights of particular claims that we too have and the central government have. Again, I am no lawyer and this is a legal matter but they have, I was told, they did go to our other locations to start marking off particular assets of the Belize City Council which is really assets for the residents of Belize City.”
Jose Sanchez
“Traffic and where else?”
Zenaida Moya Flowers
“We have four different sites, four different locations. We have the main office on North Front Street. We have the Commercial Center that houses a lot of our departments. We have the Traffic Department that is right on Youth for the Future Drive and we have the Works and Planning Department which is at four and a half miles.”
The six million dollars S.E.L. owes the government is for sales tax and G.S.T. that the company has not paid central government. Interestingly enough, Moya said that S.E.L. did not pay trade license tax for the years it was operational. Late this evening an impromptu press conference was called at the council’s office on North Front Street, but it was summarily cancelled and the press was informed that a press release would be issued regarding the crow footing of the city’s assets.
