Supreme Court Examines Feinstein/FSTV/G.O.B. Relationship

Andrew Marshalleck

Can the Government of Belize make agreements with a private party concerning another private party’s operation of his/her business? Can the Government cede collection of revenue by taxes to a statutory body without legislative support? These and other questions are being asked in the Supreme Court in the case of developer Michael Feinstein, the mastermind behind the creation of the Stake Bank cruise ship docking facility offshore Belize City. He is suing both the Government and the Belize Tourism Board as well as Fort Street Tourism Village, of which he was a majority owner, concerning agreements amended after he left the business in 2003 to start Stake Bank. He was never a party to these agreements but the threat Stake Bank represented led to FSTV seeking to consolidate its position within the industry, as Feinstein’s attorney Andrew Marshalleck told us after arguments concluded this evening.

Andrew Marshalleck, Attorney for Michael Feinstein

“What we are saying is that the contractual provisions and there are a number of them—there is Two-E, Two-F, Five, Seven and Four of the contract—are unlawful. The provision in the contract is paragraph four—that has to do with head taxes—but the other provisions have to do with exclusivity and other requirements they’ve sought to impose on the Stake Bank development. Here we have two strangers to the development sitting down and making an agreement as to how my client is to proceed with a development and we have serious objections to that kind of thing taking place. We think it is unlawful.”