Approximately 15.1 million dollars of your social security money, plus interest remains in limbo, and it may stay that way until Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin makes a decision next month.
The total sum is a result of a case brought by the Social Security Board against Sunshine Holdings Limited, one of the Ashcroft Allied companies. Back in 2005, the company was given a loan of 10 million dollars from SSB to purchase 22.39% shares in Belize Telemedia Limited.
The former directors of Sunshine, Dean Boyce and Keith Arnold, say that the company does not owe the money. You may be aware that these men are the very same trustees of the BTL Employees Trust, which has been the local agents of the Ashcroft Alliance in the seemingly endless stream of litigation over the acquisition of the telephone company.
When the UDP Administration nationalized BTL, they acquired all the shares held by Sunshine Holdings, so the company didn't make any payments toward the loan to SSB.
Social Security then took the company to court and got a default judgment in their favour in 2011, which in which the Supreme Court ruled the company owed 15.1 million dollars.
The BTL Employees Trust made an application to the Supreme Court that the court should wait to enforce this default judgement. The Application was heard before the Chief Justice this week, and final arguments were completed on Wednesday.
After the case we spoke to both sides, and they explained their positions to us:
Michael Young, Attorney for Social Security Board
"Ten million dollars plus interest from in 2005 I think it was and it has its claim because payments were not made. It got a judgment against Sunshine Holdings and the government had taken over BTL including the assets, the shares of shareholders which of course included also Sunshine Holdings and the Ashcroft group putting themselves forward as trustees for the BTL employees have applied to have that judgment set aside."
Godfrey Smith, Attorney for Sunshine Holdings
"....Is to now that it's an off shoot from the nationalization cases. You may recall that Sunshine, one of the parties to this case held shares in Telemedia on behalf of the BTL employees. The trustees of which are Dean Boyce and Keith Arnold. You may also recall that when the employees were purchasing their shares in BTL way back in 2005, they had to obtain a loan from Social Security Board, the government and the Belize Bank. The way they were going to pay back that loan was through dividends and there was a 5 year moratorium."
"As you also know in 2009, the government nationalize Telemedia and so no dividends were paid to Sunshine, so Sunshine obviously couldn't make its loan payments."
Michael Young, Attorney for Social Security Board
"The point is that it is Social Security Board's money that we are talking about that was lend to Sunshine Holdings and the issue between the Ashcroft group and the government in relation to BTL is separate and distinct issue. Here we are dealing with monies that were advanced by Social Security Board out of the Social Security fund, the monies have not been paid back and therefore Social Security Board claimed the monies through a court action got judgment and want to be in a position where it can enforce the judgment and what they are seeking to do is to get that judgment to set aside and to have this brought into the turmoil, so to speak on the acquisitions. Our position (Social Security Board) is that really we don't have anything to do with that."
Godfrey Smith, Attorney for Sunshine Holdings
"You can't have it both ways; you can't say to Sunshine well, you owe us these money but you know what behind the scenes you orchestrated and we colluded t ensure that you couldn't pay it because we control BTL, we control SSB and we took Sunshine and we control that as well, we ensured that no dividends were paid to Sunshine and then we turn around and say that it's your fault you never paid us foreclose. We say there is something wrong with that, there is some justice involved there that should be looked at by the Caribbean Court of Justice."
The Chief Justice will deliver his decision on December 13, a timeline set to give the Court of Appeal time to release their ruling on the 2011 reacquisition of BTL by the Government of Belize.
15.1 million dollars was the figure when the default judgment was awarded, and 2 years has passed by since, and no payments have been made.
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