Tonight the Port of Belize remains firmly in the hands of the Ashcroft Alliance. Management, operations and possession remains under the hand of receiver Arturo Tux Vasquez, appointed by the Ashcroft-affiliated Company, Private Investment Limited, or P-I-L, as it is called.
Operations at the Port continue un-interrupted - and all indications are that a smooth transition was effected.
But it is anything but smooth for the Luke Espat Group - which maintains that the Port was stolen from its owner, a theft which he says was enforced by the Police Department. Today, the police were still there, though with a much lesser presence - we only saw a pair of officers at the gate - as opposed to - including senior officers yesterday.
Espat has sworn that he will re-take the company when the Police leave - and he swears that the Ashcroft Alliance will face a rude awakening.
How that will be effected - or through what means remained deliberately vague when we called Espat today.
As we reported - according to bank documents 7news has obtained - a letter sent on Wednesday from the British Caribbean Bank to the Port of Belize and signed by Andrew Ashcroft - the son of Michael Ashcroft - discusses a thirty eight million US dollar credit facility with the Bank - that is 76 million Belize dollars.
There's also a letter dated third January from Private Investment Limited, which tells Espat he has failed to pay interest on the loan - and that the outstanding interest stands at 3.7 million Belize dollars.
One group that's watching all this very closely is the Christian Workers Union. They had a meeting with members today -a nd though only about three dozen showed up - they say their message is clear: they don't want any problems:..
Antonio Gonzalez - President CWU
"What we did this morning was to inform them about the meeting we had with Mr. Vasquez yesterday about the commitment made by Mr. Vasquez, we gave them a copy of the letter received from Mr. Vasquez dated 5th January 2012 in relation to certain commitments that there would be no changes to the status quo right now and also that he is committed to continue the dialogue concerning the association's new agreement."
James McFoy, General Secretary, CWU
"At the same time as we said earlier that we will be monitoring the situation because you know how things happen at times. Sometimes, they don't say immediate change but suddenly you see a drastic change. Then it might creep up on us, when it creep up on us it becomes enormous because we did not challenge it but we intend to challenge any changes that will affect our members."
Antonio Gonzalez
"We wish to say that not because Mr. Espat had or have these financial problems with their lenders or whatever but we had somewhat of an ongoing good relationship with the management. In fact we had an ongoing discussion about a new collective agreement on stevedores but since the change yesterday then we have to deal with the new persons who are in power right now."
Jules Vasquez
"PIL, the receivers' company, they just have one of those offices at 60 Market Square, we don't know who they are. I see Andrew Ashcroft, Michael Ashcroft's son signing the letter. Are you concern that being not necessarily a person resident in Belize they might say well the union could eat grass."
James McFoy
"Well I think we need to maybe get something from the big authority because as Mr. Vasquez mentions, he is only the appointed receiver, but we need to get something from the big boys to assure us. We also give the assurance that we will work with them. That is a mutual understanding."
Antonio Gonzalez
"As we said we met with Mr. Guiseppi and Mr. Marshalleck from the Belize Bank and we show them - made it clear that whatever changes you have if you don't consult us you will run into problems. You know we have a history of a lot of conflicts and things Jules, so we don't want that with the new management but if they don't consult the union, if they don't let the union participate in any decision making then it can lead to problems. We don't want that at this stage. We want to find common grounds so that it could move along."
Gonzalez explained that attendance at the meeting was low because the Sugar ship is in Port which has their members working.
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