Wall Street Journal says scam artists made loan to Garcia

A newspaper figures in another story this morning, but this time it’s the prestigious “Wall Street Journal”. A story in Tuesday’s edition reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an order to a Belize based company, Swiss Trade and Commerce Trust Limited, to repay over nine million U.S. dollars it allegedly defrauded from U.S. investors. Named along with the company are its owners Lloyd Winburn and Eddie Blackwell. In its report the S.E.C. claims the men spent investors’ money on real estate, a shrimp farm and a mechanic shop, and also made a loan of forty thousand U.S. dollars to none other than Minister of Agriculture, Russel Garcia, to build a house. Today News Five called Garcia to ask for an explanation. He said that he knew the men because they were involved in aquaculture. They were also in the housing business, he said, and after seeing their brochures Garcia contracted with them to have them build a house for him in Dangriga. According to Garcia the price was ninety six thousand dollars, and since the house was a model for a future subdivision, he was to pay for it upon its completion. What happened next is not exactly clear but it seems that the house was never completely finished. According to the Minister he paid the company — through its attorney, Oscar Sabido, somewhere between sixty and seventy thousand dollars. Garcia, who today lives in the house, says there was no loan of any money, although he could see that the building of the model house could have been seen from the company’s point of view as a loan. We attempted to confirm Garcia ‘s account with Oscar Sabido but were unable to contact him this afternoon.