Last night, we showed you part 1 of our interview with Iranian American Businessman Michael Modiri. He's the man who has become sort of famous for reporting that his neighbour, American Tour Operator Bradley Paumen masterminded a plot to kill him. They have unresolved business in the criminal courts because Paumen is out on bail right now for charges of abetment to commit murder.
As we showed you, Modiri claims that Paumen continues to trespass on his Franks Eddy Property to run his million-dollar Dark Night tour, even though the Supreme Court has sanctioned him for it. Modiri is making a stand to stop this trespass by blocking the road which Paumen needs to use to ferry his guests to his tour compound.
Modiri says that he has had enough, and he will not be pushed around by Paumen anymore, but why would he risk conflict with a man he's accused of plotting to kill him? Well, he says that he had plans to set up his own tour company to make use of the Dark Night cave system, and after years of planning, he will not give up on it. Yesterday, he shared a few details on how he came to buy the land, which now puts him in direct confrontation with Paumen:
Michael Modiri
"The property is situated in the ideal spot for zip lining, cave tubing, which is the only two that is currently utilized by Dark Night. But also a few other ones that we had planned and I brought in the engineers from New Zealand, USA and Mexico on different activities that we can offer and everything has been done, all the preliminary work has been done at about 3-4 years ago everything was getting ready to hit the ground and start. He blocked the gate, they came in, they couldn't get access and we couldn't get back to my land and since then he has blocked me. Access became available only through court orders and now what I am doing is trying to open the access and the investors, some of them I've lost due to the negative publicity around Belize in general. What happened with the life threats and this and that and some of them are not only refusing to invest, they are calling me a fool or crazy to come back here and continue my quest. Because why would you want to make a little money if your life is on danger? But it's a project that I've been involved with for over 9 years and I don't want to give up that easy. What I'm doing back there is not for revenge or anything of that nature. I'm just trying to open access to it so I can bring the engineers back and start construction and at the time we were to the point where another 4-6 months max and we would be operational."
Now, having heard Modiri's characterization of Paumen, you'd think he is the biggest bully on the block. So, today, we sought him out for comment, and we did reach him by telephone. He told us, thanks, but no thanks; he will not comment. He directed us to go speak with the residents of Franks Eddy about this road at the center of this dispute.
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