G.O.B.’s case against Telemedia for back taxes adjourned again
When we last left the case of the Income Tax Department versus three Michael Ashcroft controlled companies regarding non-payment of millions of dollars in business tax, negotiations to reach an out of court settlement had fallen apart. In response, the Barrow administration took out fresh summonses against Telemedia, Digicell and Belize Enterprise Systems Limited for the approximately four point six million dollars in back taxes due for February and March. This morning Senior Bailiff Luis Requena and Telemedia’s attorney Eamon Courtenay were back before Magistrate Earl Usher to proceed with the matter but at the request of Requena, the case has been adjourned until June twenty-fourth. According to Courtenay, this morning’s adjournment is reaction to his clients’ legal position that the Government’s application to the court is premature.
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney, Telemedia
“There are a number of procedural irregularities in this judgment summons and I think the Commissioner is now seriously looking at it and hopefully it will be able to be dealt with without having to bring it back to court.”
Janelle Chanona
“I heard you mention something about common sense is prevailing instead of politics … what did you mean?”
Eamon Courtenay
“I meant very simply that we’ve been going back and forth, going to court for unnecessary adjournments and things like that simply because it seems to me that there’s a different agenda at play here. There’s a procedure under the income tax act that has to be followed before you reach the point of a judgment debtor summons. Clearly it has not been followed and I think that is what has given the Commissioner of Income Tax reason to stop and look at it and I am happy that at least he’s looking at it at a serious way now. As you know, the substantive issue; the question of the actual payment is a matter that is in arbitration in London. That’s not a matter for the Magistrate’s Court. The two are connected and I think that is where, you know, people are trying to push the substantive matter before the procedural. And I think that’s where we are not following the proper procedure.”
B.T.L. pays the highest rate of business tax in the country at nineteen percent. When Michael Ashcroft repurchased the company following Jeffrey Prosser’s failure to come up with the purchase price, the Musa administration allegedly gave Ashcroft the same concessions it had offered Prosser. Those, ostensibly enshrined in a secret agreement, include a guaranteed fifteen percent rate of return. It would appear that as part of that agreement, Telemedia believes it can withhold payment of its taxes when it does not make its guaranteed profit margin. While the Magistrates’ Court case has been adjourned until June twenty-fourth, on June seventeenth, the Ashcroft companies will ask the Chief Justice to recognise the English injunctions ordered against the Government which restrain Belmopan from, among other things, issuing any judgment summons.
