C.C.J. Rules on Belize V.S. Trinidad Sugar Case

The Caribbean Court of Justice handed down their ruling today in a case pursued by Belize against Trinidad and Tobago. Belize had contended it had evidence to show that between November 2018 and June 2020, Trinidad purchased brown sugar from non-CARICOM states without imposing the forty percent Common External Tariff. In November of 2021, Belize filed suit with the C.C.J., which also acts as an international tribunal interpreting the Treaty of Chaguaramas. Belize was represented by Senior Counsel Andrew Marshalleck and Samantha Matute. We spoke to Marshalleck today, who first gave us insight into what prompted the legal challenge.

E. Andrew Marshalleck

E. Andrew Marshalleck, S.C., Attorney for Belize

“B.S.I. was having difficulties selling its sugar into the Trinidad market because it couldn’t meet the prices that the purchasers in Trinidad insisted they could get brown sugar for. The prices were very low. This was the first signal. B.S.I. took the position that there was no way that anybody can sell brown sugar cheaper to Trinidad if the C.E.T. was being charged, than the prices they could offer. They were of the view that whatever was happening there was causing a market distortion on the ground that was driving the prices so low that not even B.S.I. whose sugar is not subject to the C.E.T. could compete. So, they conducted investigations and they were unable to uncover a number of shipments leaving from this region, Honduras, Guatemala, and heading to Trinidad. But, the information didn’t have the particularity, nor were we able to get the primary sources of that information before the court to testify to it. It is a difficult proposition. You see, all documentation, evidence, imputation, would necessarily be with Trinidad. They know what was imported when and what the documentation is. So we had sought, based on the preliminary information, to get orders of disclosure from the court to force Trinidad to turn over documents that they had to show that what the circumstantial evidence showed was happening, which is that C.E.T., that brown sugar was being imported without charging the C.E.T.”

Paul Lopez

“Were those documents released?”

E. Andrew Marshalleck, S.C, Attorney for Belize

“What Trinidad did was simply to go on its Asycuda system and print out all its invoices, all the entries for brown sugar. All of them necessarily showed that the C.E.T. was charged. The charges in the computer system are automated. So, once it is there it means it was charged. The ones that concern us are the ones that are not there.”