Briceño Administration Resolves Onerous B.I.S.L. Debt at a Discount

The Belize International Services Limited, the parent company for the International Merchant Marine Registry of Belize, IMMARBE, and the International Business Companies Registry, I.B.C., was forcibly acquired by government under former Prime Minister Dean Barrow in 2013.  Seven years later, in July 2020, the Caribbean Court of Justice determined that the appropriation of B.I.S.L. was unlawful and ordered government to compensate the Ashcroft group.  Initially, B.I.S.L. had sought compensation in excess of seventy million U.S. dollars.  But the good news tonight, notwithstanding the burdensome debt incurred by the previous administration, is that the Government of Belize has reached a discounted settlement for the financial damages payable to B.I.S.L.  This morning, a press release was issued on the matter and Prime Minister John Briceño made himself available for a brief comment.

John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We have signed a settlement deed with B.I.S.L. for a full settlement on the acquisition of the IMMARBE and the I.B.C. registry that the previous government did in 2013. In August 2020, the CCJ came down very hard on Belize, saying that it was acquired illegally, unconstitutionally, and we can continue at another time to quote what was said about the government. The point is that it has to be paid and it was sent back to the Supreme Court to be able to be dealt with expeditiously. Obviously, you could not have expected us to have dealt with that, you know, when we just got into government, with the challenges or the different crises that we had in front of us, the pandemic and then the financial crisis that we inherited, including renegotiating the Super Bond. Once that was off the table, for the next six months we set up a team that met with the people from B.I.S.L. to come up with a definitive settlement. We agreed to pay thirty-eight point two-five million U.S. dollars of which eleven point five million is going to be paid in Belize dollars. Approximately, a little over thirty-two million dollars is going to be paid in U.S. and the rest is going to be, eleven point five million, is going to be paid in Belize dollars. I know the question is, why settle now?  Well if we don’t settle now, we can look at the history with the previous government, we’ll be paying even a lot more.”