Since 2014, the BNTU and the PSU had been controlling the use of this money after the Barrow Administration handed it over to them.

It goes all the way back to the wage freeze from 1995 to 1997 implemented by the Esquivel Administration.

To compromise with those public officers, Prime Minister Esquivel gave them 450,000 shares in BTL. These shares were issued INSTEAD of the frozen increments. The dividends from the shares were supposed to be used to compensate the public officers for their losses in the wage freeze.

Well, Prime Minister Dean Barrow handed over the proceeds to those BTL shares to the Unions in 2014. It was held in an entity set up by the unions called the Public Sector Workers Trust. Before the Trust disclosed financial statements to the aggrieved claimants in the case, it was believed that they were controlling in the vicinity of 9 million dollars. The financial statements from the Trust indicate that the total is approximately 7.8 million dollars, with 4.8 million dollars of that sum being held in cash. The rest has already reportedly been used on other projects.

So, to the judgment itself. In March of this year, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment declaring that the Trust, for which the BNTU and the PSU serve as settlors, was invalid un-enforceable and in breach.

To the layman that would mean that the operations of the trust needed to be discontinued. Further to this, the court ordered that a new trust in consultation with the beneficiaries be drafted where the government of Belize would be the settlor and not the unions. The judgment also stated that the beneficiaries to the trust should be only those public officers who had their salary increments frozen between 1995 and 1997. There were also orders given that there needed to be accounting for the moneys which should be in the trust and that any money that had been used needed to be recovered.

Well that was 7 months ago, and it appears that very little of the order has been adhered to. We understand that the unions have proposed a new trust deed, one that has had very little of input by the actual beneficiaries, as defined by the Supreme Court judgment. As we understand it, those true beneficiaries it are not having it.

In an update issued by the beneficiaries, it once again reasserts its right to the ownership of the funds in the trust and goes further to state that the unions are not the ones who should have drafted the trust. The statement ends with harsh warning that "The beneficiaries in particular and the public in general are advised not to entertain any distortion, misconception or falsehood which the unions might want to propagate in order to deceive."

As we understand it, the Attorney General's ministry is in the process of having all parties sit down to address the situation.

Of note is that the beneficiaries are taking issue with the way in which the money is currently being spent. Some of them are complaining that the unions are continuing a loans program which flies directly in the face of the judgment. In that loans program, public officers, who were not affected by the wage freeze, are reportedly still benefiting from money they should have no access to.