The case of Glenn Tillett versus Lois Young and Nestor Vasquez

Nestor Vasquez

In June of this year, media personality Glenn Tillett’s case against Lois Young, Nestor Vasquez and the Social Security Board was freed to continue at the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the then-Acting Chief Justice Samuel Awich made at an initial hearing. Today, the substantive matter was heard before new-Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin. The case concerns the validity of decisions taken by the Investment Committee of the Board and later by the Board itself. That decision paved the way for Government, months after the forcible takeover of Belize Telemedia Limited, to sell shares of forty-four point five percent to the Social Security Board for fifty million dollars. Tillett is claiming that the recommendations of the Investment Committee, which voted three-two in favor of the decision to recommend the investment with Vasquez, as chairman, casting the deciding vote, and the subsequent decision of the Board to investment going five four in favor with Young as a key vote, were invalid. At the time, Vasquez and Young served multiple interests with the Government and B.T.L.  Furthermore, Young represented the Government in multiple cases involving the telephone company for which she was paid some one point two million dollars in addition to being named company secretary and legal counsel, while Vasquez continues to be executive chairman of Telemedia’s Board. Tillett explains.

Glenn Tillett, Claimant

Glenn Tillett

“For me, the point of contention is that they as the people, the persons there, did not have the legal authority to make the decision. The fact that the investment committee and the board of directors’; theirs were the casting vote…I think points to that. to my mind, Miss Young-Barrow and Mister Vasquez were in a position of conflict of interest seeing as they were both associated with B.T.L. and at the same time were in a position of authority—namely the chairman of the investment board and the other as the chairman of the board of directors of the Social Security. In my view, they should have recused themselves from that particular decision. It is ironic if you will that I was motivated in part to file suit because Miss Young Barrow fought hard for several years to really bring notice to the workers of Belize; the true owners of the funds; that the decisions that guided the Social Security were nearly all political ones.”