You may remember that terrible traffic accident back on July 3, 2013 which killed 64 year-old taxi driver Eliseo Chan, and his 3 female passengers Molly Hude, Angela Bugeja, and Ioanna Thomopoulou.
The three women were all international scholars who were studying archeology under the then Director of Archaeology, Dr. Jaime Awe. On that date, they were heading to the airport when the taxi that they were in slammed head on into a Westline Bus right after Busman Arnold Bridge, at mile 60 on the Western Highway. They died on impact or shortly after.
Well, in the years that followed, their foreign families brought a private suit against the insurance company involved in covering the vehicles in the accident, and they won over a hundred thousand dollars in compensation.
But, because of the current problems facing the banking system due to the correspondent banking difficulties, they haven't been able to cash their cheques for over a year. They reached out to us to publicize their difficulties, and today we managed to catch up with their attorney who has been trying to get them the closure they are so desperately seeking:
Hon. Kareem Musa, Attorney for the Defendants
"On July 2nd 2013, that's almost 3 years ago, there was a horrific accident at mile 60 on the George Price highway involving a taxi motor vehicle driven at the time by a Mr. Eliseo Chan. In the motor vehicle with him at the time were 3 international students who were here studying archeology. That motor vehicle collided with a bus and all 4 passengers including the driver, Mr. Chan, passed away. Since that accident I was retained by the families of the foreign students to take a civil action in the Supreme Court. That was done and last year July in 2015, the case concluded and we were able to secure the sum of $150,000 Belize Dollars for the families. Unfortunately, that was only half of the story. The other half which is that none of these families actually live in Belize, they have no ties or connections to Belize. They would have needed the funds to be sent out to their respected jurisdictions been Malta, Greece and the United States, but that has proven extremely difficult. It is going almost a year now and we have received approval from Central Bank to wire the funds out to these families but because of our dire situation, the correspondent banking situation, it is next to impossible now to send funds out of the jurisdictions to these various countries. So what we encounter in the process, we encounter banks that no longer have correspondent bank relations and those that do are saying to us that they do not have U.S currency available to send out. They put us in a waiting line and we are informed on a daily basis that the merchants come first. As you know, the merchants in Belize purchase their products outside of Belize and they are given priority. So we've just been sitting in this waiting line, its an extremely frustrating process and I have to agree with the families that its getting ridiculous. The fact that they cannot put closure on this case, the loss of their 3 daughters over these last 3 years is truly another black eye for Belize."
Recently Molly Hude's parents tried to get her money transferred by trying to cash the Belizean cheque using their Wells Fargo account. Their understanding was that it would work this way since the banks don't have US currency to facilitate the transaction in their currency. Unfortunately, the Central Bank of Belize stepped in and blocked the transaction. The reason, according to the letter is that Belize cheques are not allowed to be cashed outside of the Belize jurisdiction.
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