Opposition Leader Writes to Royal Caribbean C.E.O. Liberty

Opposition Leader Shyne Barrow has written to Chief Executive Officer Jason Liberty of the Royal Caribbean Group regarding the company’s recently signed Memorandum of Understanding with Portico and Boskalis.  In the five-page letter, Barrow writes, “the harrowing revelations of illegal, unauthorized, and unethical one-sided offerings in the Portico Definitive Agreement are enough to give one vertigo.  It is no wonder the agreement was kept secret from the Belizean public for two and a half years, despite repeated demands from the opposition, media and other stakeholders that it be made public and countless requests for copies of it under the Freedom of Information Act.  By now, I’m sure you have heard that both the former Prime Minister Dean Barrow and the former Attorney General of Belize, Michael Peyrefitte, publicly condemned the agreement has having been signed secretly by a rogue former minister without lawful authority or Cabinet approval.  They have both publicly stated that some of the obligations the agreement purported to bind the government to were beyond the power of any minister and even of the Cabinet”.  Elsewhere in the letter, it goes on to read, “I am bewildered as to why a corporation of your international standing and reputation did not question the bonafides of a contract signed in secret in the final days of the last administration, granting concessions, beyond the expectation of the most rapacious investor, to a shell company owned by two small-time businessmen without any track record of any significant development in Belize or elsewhere”.  The letter ends by saying, “the next general elections in Belize is one to two years away.  If you proceed with Portico under the thick clouds of suspected corruption that currently enshroud it, I will have no choice but to have my government review and use all legal courses to remedy this matter when I’m elected as Prime Minister and Minister of Finance”.