7 News Belize

Dunked Attorney Says Blame Barrow
posted (November 1, 2017)
Later on you'll hear the Prime Minister address the issue more directly. But, first, to the main attorney for the Ashcroft Alliance, Eamon Courtenay. Today, after the judgement was handed down, he said the court was right to uphold his clients expenses - and now the Prime Minister has to answer for signing a settlement agreement that was full of holes:..

Eamon Courtney, S.C., Attorney For Dunkeld
"This obligation of the government was established by the settlement agreement. The government was aware that they had to make the payment by the 28th of July."

"Their issue was on the question of how much US dollars was to be paid. And the dispute between us really was whether they had a right to determine for themselves what liabilities of Dunkeld and the Trust they were going to honor. Now that is entirely unreasonable and the court has rejected that position advanced by the government."

"Now there's a payment of about 78 million dollars by the 10th of November. I am told that's about a quarter of the current reserves of the country, that is a tremendous amount of money but there is a court order against the government, and my clients expect that they will obey the court order."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"When the prime minister made the public pitch about the saving grace of the settlement, it was that there would be tens of millions in a charitable fund for the public good."

Eamon Courtney, S.C., Attorney For Dunkeld
"It is about 10.2, 10.3 million in the employees trust and a quarter million in the Hayward Charitable trust, so in terms of money available for charitable works in Belize, it is quarter million dollars."

"Once again, Jules, the question here is who is responsible for this state of affairs? The agreement as you know was negotiated by the prime minister and Mr. Ashcroft themselves. And then lawyers went to work to put that agreement into legal language. The CCJ, today, as well as they did before, have criticized the drafting of the agreement, and essentially what they are saying is that the agreement is not what the Prime Minister said to the public it was. Whatever he may have had in his mind is not on the paper. I can only say that that is his fault. He signed it; he read it before he signed it. The exposure of the country today is squarely on the Government of Belize under Prime Minister Barrow. It is his agreement, this is not no old PUP agreement that he likes to rely on - this is his agreement. At the end of the day, however, the nation is being called upon to pay 78 million dollars, US dollars in ten days. That is a very, very difficult thing to do, but there is a court order and the Prime Minister who signed it is the Minister of Finance and he needs to come up and come up now."

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