Telemedia to Argue Divestment Case at the CCJ

Eamon Courtenay

The other case had to do with Belize Telemedia Limited and it involved a process which was more of a formality than anything else.  Today, the Court of Appeal granted permission for Telemedia to seek redress at the Caribbean Court of Justice. The matter to be heard is the divestment of the shares in our very own Channel Five by the former Directors of Telemedia. Earlier this year, the directors, prior to the first nationalization by the Government of Belize in 2009, won a judgment in the Court of Appeal that declared them free of responsibility for financing Great Belize Productions, parent company of Great Belize Television. It was argued by the Court of Appeal in November 2014, and the position of those Directors was upheld. But now government, which currently controls Telemedia, has chosen to go to a higher Court. Today attorneys for both parties spoke to the media as they exited the Courtroom.

Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Former Directors of Telemedia

“Quite frankly Belize Telemedia is entitled to carry the matter forward and they have chosen to do that. Certainly my clients had hoped that this would be the end of the road because they enjoy the benefit of an indemnity in the articles of the company so it is difficult to understand how it is that Telemedia expects to carry this forward, hope to get a judgment, only to be met with an indemnity that requires the company to indemnify my clients. But they want to go to the CCJ and so we are of course forced to go there.”

Michael Young

Michael Young, Attorney for Telemedia

“The Court of Appeal made its judgment on the basis that there was a deed of indemnity, and also that there was a clause of indemnity in the articles of association that really destroyed the cause of action as against the directors…the wrongs that we say were done to the company while the company was under the control of the Ashcroft Group. So fundamentally the Court of Appeal upheld their position that the acts were protected by the deed of indemnity, and we are challenging the decision of the Court of Appeal which of course we treat with respect but we differ and are going to the CCJ to say that these wrongs were done to the company and even if the deed of indemnity is a shield in relation to those acts it does not extinguish the wrong and does not make clean what is not clean. So we say that in any effect the wrongs were done, the company was injured in a very substantial way, more than ten million dollars, and we maintain that the matter is one which should go to full trial.”

Young and B.T.L. now have ninety days to file the case before the CCJ.