COLA Attorneys Says Delayed Misappropriation was a Costly Blunder

Kareem Musa

Attorney Kareem Musa, who describes the entire nationalization as a political blunder, maintains that the former owners of B.T.L. should have been compensated at the time the utility company was appropriated in 2009.  Prompt compensation, according to Musa, would have avoided the hefty sum prescribed by the arbitration tribunal.

Kareem Musa, Attorney for COLA

“It is somewhere to the tune of three hundred and fifty million dollars plus that the Belizean public will not have to cough up because of what I would characterize as a major political blunder by this Prime Minister. It was a misguided and ill-advised decision not only to take a private company but to take eight years for it to reach the end of the legal road, for all the family members to have made millions of dollars and now end up costing the Belizean people seventy-five million dollars in interests alone.  Let us not forget that had Mister Barrow settled this matter in 2009 when he acquired the company, it would have saved the Belizean people a hell of a lot of money. So now we have to pick up the pieces and we have to cover for Mister Barrow having dragged this thing out for a whole eight years—not only in the Supreme Court, in the Court of Appeal, the Caribbean Court of Justice and now finally the tribunal. And what I mentioned to Mister Brackett and the members of COLA this morning, to me the thing that stood out most was found at page fourteen of the tribunal’s decision because it is something that was revealed in this decision that was not revealed by the Prime Minister when he went and settled with Michael Ashcroft in September 2015. Basically what the Prime Minister did when he went to settle in September 2015 was to throw himself and the nation at the mercy of the tribunal. He withdrew all legal arguments. He withdrew them; that is what is clearly stated in the settlement deed. That it has conceded to the jurisdiction of the tribunal; that it withdraws all legal arguments and that it is now throwing itself to the mercy—you decide tribunal what will be the quantum of damages that we will have to pay. That is a decision that this Prime Minister could have taken since 2009 when he first acquired the company. So again that is something that is an eyesore; that is something that we in the Belizean public will have to digest and we will have to find a way now to pay for this political blunder.”