CitCo Crowfooted for $2.5M Debt

Michel Chebat

And while the loss of his vehicle is surely bad news for the Mayor, there’s much more this week. On Thursday, and today, there were Court Marshalls at City Hall. They were busily marking off assets because once again, the Belize City Council is being crow-footed for being malpago. Belize Maintenance Limited is owed two point five million dollars, the result of a 2009 judgment, and there’s been no payment. Today BML’s attorney Michel Chebat explained.

Michel Chebat, Attorney for BML

“I got involved last year in this matter, and since then I personally have met several times with the Mayor and with the City Administrator in an effort to try and get this matter resolved. Throughout last year there were discussions, there were concessions on the part of BML to try and accommodate the City Council but it never happened despite several promises and several meetings, and I attended all of those meetings. Till we came to about December last year and we felt that no headway would have been made in the discussions we were having, and so what we did was in January I ended up filing a Writ of Fi Fa, which is what we are now seeing. A Writ of Fi Fa is really an enforcement order from the Court so that we can go in and enforce the judgment, and that is why the Marshalls are down there. They were down there yesterday also, and they are there today again trying to mark goods to satisfy the judgment. The law requires that once the goods have been marked, the City Council has five days or so in which they can reclaim the goods, or if the goods belong to somebody else there is a five day period in which they can reclaim. Once that doesn’t happen then we will proceed and seek the permission of the Court to have the goods that were marked sold. We are hoping it doesn’t come to that. We are hoping that the City Council will come to its senses and will pay BML what is owed from 2009.”