7 News Belize

Mek Mi Rich Trial Winding Up
posted (February 11, 2016)
The Battle over the Mek Mi Rich Game Show went back to the Supreme Court today. As we've been reporting, businessman Curtis Swasey has sued BTL and the owners of Mek Mi Rich. He claims that BTL breeched a non-disclosure agreement, gave away his gameshow idea of lottery texting, and that allowed the owners of MMR Belize to profit off his stolen idea.

For about 6 hours today, Justice Courtney Abel heard closing arguments from Swasey's attorney, Kareem Musa, and BTL's attorney, Magali Perdomo as to whether or not Mek Mi Rich is a stolen idea. Musa spent much of his submissions trying to convince the judge that though there is no clear proof that BTL gave away the idea, there is enough circumstantial evidence to prove that they did pass on Swasey's ideas to the owners of MMR Belize, Sunjay Hotchandani and Andre Vega, the son of Deputy Prime Minister Gaspar Vega.

The judge was very meticulous picking apart Musa's arguments, and in the afternoon, it was Magali Perdomo's turn to try to convince the judge. She focused a large part of her submissions answering the pointed questions in her case.

The hearing finished late this evening, and we spoke with Musa about his impression of the day's progress. Here's that interview:

Kareem Musa, Attorney for the Claimant
"It went extremely well. We are pleased with how the submissions went this morning. As you know it's a very technical issue that we are dealing with here; the issue of lottery texting by way of SMS messages. It's something new. It's something novel to Belize. We are saying that Mr. Swasey is the one who develop that concept along with BTL over the course of two and a half years and we are saying that in fact MMR (Mek Mi Rich) company then came in and spring boarded on the efforts of Mr. Swasey. The cases are very clear on the point and we feel very confident. Again, we are midway through submissions. We finish ours. BTL finish they submissions and I believe Mek Mi Rich will give their submissions on the 23rd."

Daniel Ortiz
"Are you comfortable with the issue of not finding the smoking gun which ties your client's game to their game in the way it was supposedly disclosed as you are claiming here?"

Kareem Musa, Attorney for the Claimant
"No. In my opinion there was a smoking gun. The smoking gun came as a result of circumstantial evidence. There can be no way that we could prove that BTL actually sent an email to MMR saying here is the project. Here is how it works. That we could not find. But we certainly found evidence from BTL's witnesses and MMR witnesses that were contradictory and lacking in many respects which leads us to the inference and of course we are urging the court to likewise see that inference that in fact MMR spring boarded on Mr. Swasey's concept."

The case goes back to court on February 23, where Perdomo will be allowed to finish up her submissions, and then MMR Belize's attorney, Naima Barrow, will get her chance.

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