Rosewood again but for how much?

Forestry Minister Lisel Alamilla has publicly burned rosewood, declared an amnesty which benefitted illegal exporters and then disclosed a deal which saw those illegal exporters getting back their rosewood. That deal supposedly involved exporters selling the rosewood and splitting the proceeds half/half with G.O.B. Condemnation notwithstanding, the deal was struck and the matter blew over. But now Alamilla is back in the public spotlight.  The news broke last Friday that far from a fifty/fifty split, the exporters paid G.O.B. only fifteen thousand dollars per container of rosewood. To get the sense of this outrage, you’d have to understand that each container has a market value of about two hundred thousand dollars. So can Minister Alamilla seek sanctuary behind the walls of Cabinet on this one? Well, it appears not, since Foreign Minister and Attorney General, Wilfred Elrington, says to his recollection the matter was never raised in Cabinet. Mike Rudon has been following the rosewood trail and has the story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

By now Forestry Minister Lisel Alamilla probably wishes that she’d never seen rosewood, or even heard the word rosewood. She’s taken a pounding on every aspect of it along with the very powerful Deputy Prime Minister Gaspar Vega who allegedly has a very heavy hand in the matter. Because of forestry decisions, the Deputy Prime Minister’s brother, the largest exporter of rosewood in Belize, was handed back confiscated rosewood during the so-called amnesty. And with this amazing and disgusting revelation of the fifteen thousand dollar per container rosewood giveaway, all fingers are pointing to the very senior, very powerful Vega, even as the public spotlight is focused on Minister Lisel Alamilla.

Lisel Alamilla

Lisel Alamilla, Forestry Minister

“We had to negotiate a price based on what we heard people are making. We did not go…we heard all types of figures about what a container fetches and it varied rarely. Everyone that came in had a different figure that they were telling us. And it just got to a point where we had to say, you know what, just get this material out. just pay us our share, a fair share, and then export your material and let’s move on with other business in the forest department.”

Reporter

“Wouldn’t it have been more precise to say show me your invoice that you have to use for the shipping purposes and then we can determine what my pound of flitches is?”

Lisel Alamilla

“No I didn’t go into that level with it.”

Reporter

“No? So how do you ensure that you are getting fifty percent?”

Lisel Alamilla

“I’m telling you I negotiated a price.”

Reporter

“So what’s that price?”

Lisel Alamilla

“Fifteen thousand per container.”

Reporter

“Belize dollars?”

Lisel Alamilla

“Belize dollars per container.”

While Alamilla walked away, the issue is not going away. Today Attorney General and very senior member of Cabinet Wilfred Elrington told us that it was his understanding that government would have been handling the sale of rosewood, and he definitely does not recall Cabinetdiscussing or agreeing to any set figure per container.

Wilfred Elrington

Wilfred Elrington, Attorney General

“I think the Cabinet had decided that it would be sold and that government would take responsibility for the collection and sale of the rosewood and that the people who had been involved would have been compensated. But it is not my understanding that any figure had been set by the Cabinet at all. That’s not my recollection.”

Mike Rudon

“Back then what the Minister had explained was the exporters would have been given back the rosewood and they would deal with the sale because Minister Alamilla said, you know what, we’re getting different figures and we can’t figure out how much the rosewood costs, so we’ll basically trust these people to sell the rosewood and give us what they feel is half…”

Wilfred Elrington

“That aspect of it I’m not aware of. It’s her ministry and if that is what she did I’m not privy to that.”

And while Minister Alamilla may not have needed Cabinet approval, the fifteen thousand dollar figure agreed on is, to put it mildly, eyebrow-raising.

Reporter

“In terms of fifteen thousand, because that is official. She revealed that government ended up selling the rosewood for fifteen thousand per container when the value of it coming from out her ministry, which I verified, is two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars. What’s your comment on that?”

Wilfred Elrington

“Well clearly if in fact the rosewood is valued at two hundred plus thousand dollars that would be a gross undervalue. I don’t understand why anybody would want to do that.”

Reporter

“Is this something, if you can go back and verify this…is this something that you would be willing to revisit, to bring up to look at?”

Wilfred Elrington

“The issue? Maybe I would ask about it. As a matter of fact I will try to find out what has actually happened. I can’t say because I was not at any Cabinet meeting what that was discussed at all. But it is not my recollection that at any Cabinet we had agreed that a figure would have been put on the price of a container. That is not my recollection at all.”

We arrived at our figures because each standard container holds nine thousand board feet of rosewood. The market value is twenty-four dollars per board foot. That gives us a total market value per container of two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars, of which government got fifteen thousand. Mike Rudon for News Five.