F.T.C. Attacks Belize’s Justice System

Prime Minister Dean Barrow, through Barrow and Williams, has written to all media houses, warning that any re-broadcast, re-publication or repeating of F.T.C.’s allegations against him may result in civil action.  The Federal Trade Commission has filed serious allegations in court against the Prime Minister and members of cabinet, all of which the PM rejected during Wednesday’s press conference.  The F.T.C. also attacks Belize’s judicial system, saying that the Belizean court stands alone in its preposterous holding, after the court found that the allegation that Andris Pukke was “directly involved” with Sanctuary Belize, was defamatory.  In fact, the documents speak to safety issues for F.T.C. officials.  It says that Pukke has threatened people who cross him and the prominent attorney for I.O.S.B. litigation against S.B.E. in Belize was fatally shot in his home during pretrial proceedings.  This attorney is the deceased Michael Young, whose death has been ruled as a suicide by local authorities. Now, what the F.T.C. did was to file claims, suggesting that Belize was unsafe and that the country’s judicial system was not to be trusted. 

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“It was in that context that in my view that they went completely overboard. It was on June tenth in answer to liquidator’s application for the removal of the proceedings to the Belize jurisdiction in order to oppose that application they obviously felt that litigation is a kind of war by other means and they clearly determined that they would cast all sort of doubts on the integrity of the Belize jurisdiction in an effort to show that they would not able to get justice in Belize. It was in that context that they file this documents which relied on utterly unjustified innuendos, imputations and in some case, outright and complete misstatements of facts.”