Yesterday in the Belize Supreme Court – the Ashcroft Alliance
suffered another setback when Justice Oswell Legall refused to grant an injunction
in favour of the Sunshine Trust. Now if you’ve lost track of just who’s
who in the elaborate corporate shell game, Sunshine is the so-called employees’
trust which owned 20% of the shares in BTL. Critics say it was an employees’
trust in name only as the Trust was never controlled by BTL employees –
instead, the trustees were former Chairman Keith Arnold and Chairman of the
Executive Management Team, Dean Boyce.
And Boyce went to court asking for an injunction to stop government
from doing anything whatsoever with the eleven million Sunshine shares. And
that means – by extension - to stop it from doing anything with BTL generally.
Boyce in his affidavit expressed zero confidence in the new management and noted
that there is a real risk that if dividends are paid which he claimed would
do irreversible damage to Sunshine’s position.
After hearing arguments from BTL’s corporate secretary Lois Young
and Godfrey Smith who appeared for Boyce - Justice Oswell Legall didn’t
even have to take a recess to come up with his decision. He refused the application
for an injunction and awarded costs to the Government.
And while it is a victory for Government, the news is that as the Prime
Minister disclosed at his Wednesday Press Conference, BTL has planned its Annual
General Meeting for 25th. February when – for the first time in some years
– it plans to pay a cash dividend to the 900 or so small shareholders
– who own about 6% of the company. And now that Boyce has claimed - without
success - that a dividend payout could irreversibly damage the position of the
Sunshine Trust, the Prime Minister snapped at just the notion of trying to put
a judicial freeze on the dividend. For context we note that
the PM’s response came in answer to a question by PUP commentator Vaughan
Gill.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“The PUP lawyers have now gone to court seeking an injunction to stop
the company from holding the AGM and paying the dividends. These same people
who are league with Ashcroft now want to take their perfidy to new heights by
denying the ordinary Belizeans their little pittance that they would have been
entitled to as a consequence of the payment of dividends.
You ask when will there be the re-privatization, well then again I can
ask you to go consult with Messrs Eamon Courtenay and Godfrey Smith because
they have a case in court seeking to prevent the government from proceeding
with the re-privatization of BTL. Your party people, working in league with
the moving force behind so many of the difficulties that this country inherited
are now trying to stop us from proceeding with the re-privatization.
We are not yet finished with the valuation exercise. Again these people
don’t want to talk compensation because they are determined that they
will reverse the nationalization and we are even more determined with the support
of the people of this country that that will never happen.”
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