A long-standing property dispute between two Belize City businesswomen has evolved into an alleged burglary and moves and countermoves since.
Laura Leonardo, 58, of #1 Farmers’ Market in Belize City, told police that she had bought a house from the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), but ran into difficulties paying for it.
According to Leonardo, she agreed to sell the house to Yvonne Ramclam, of a Belize City address. Ramclam was supposed to pay her $50,000 personally, and take care of the DFC debt.
However, Leonardo alleges that on January 9 (the police account gives the date inaccurately as February 9) of this year, Ramclam went to her house along with two policemen, claiming to be in possession of a document that warranted the officers to make Leonardo vacate the house, but Ramclam refused to show her the document, she said.
The next day, Ramclam and a worker entered the house and stole a variety of household items amounting to some $192,505, Leonardo told police, who issued a report to the media on the matter earlier this week.
However, Steve Ramclam, Yvonne’s husband, visited Amandala on Monday afternoon and again today to categorically deny each and every facet of the report.
The couple had previously visited Amandala to tell their story, but before we could begin an investigation we were informed that the police were near to resolving the matter.
In that first visit, Yvonne Ramclam (currently out of the country) told us that after DFC had put the house on auction for a year or more, she and her husband bought it for $80,000. DFC dutifully notified Leonardo that a buyer had been found and that she had to leave, but she negotiated through her attorney, Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, in November for an extra stay through January 4.
According to Ms. Ramclam, the incident in question actually took place on January 9, after she had gotten an eviction order from the court against Leonardo on December 19. Leonardo refused to move even after she was shown the eviction notice, claiming she was never informed that DFC sold the property. Ramclam claims that Leonardo does not permanently stay in the house due to her business.
Ramclam says that under the guidance of the two officers in question, she entered the premises with Leonardo present, removed her household goods, and took them to a warehouse located on Fabers Road, which Leonardo saw and knew about.
Ramclam claims that because of her own “personal beef” with a high-ranking police officer, the officers who oversaw the eviction were threatened, her family was repeatedly harassed and they were eventually forced to dispose of the goods after numerous attempts to have Leonardo claim them failed.
In the five weeks between the January confrontation and the emergence of Monday’s police report, attempts to have various high-ranking police officers, including the officer previously mentioned in this story, and Leonardo’s pastor intercede in the recovery of the goods, failed, according to Steve Ramclam.
Today, he told us that no burglary took place as indicated in the police report, because the eviction notice was legitimate (we were given a copy of the original notice) and that it was properly read to Leonardo in the presence of the officers. The notice has no date because of the agreement between the parties to wait until after January 4.
Laura Leonardo, like Yvonne Ramclam, is currently out of the country, in her case tending to a sick husband in Melchor de Mencos, Peten, Guatemala (We had tried to get her on her cell phone earlier this week but failed for this reason). Apart from giving an interview personally to Channel Five at the request of her attorney, Leonardo has not publicly spoken on the matter.
However, her attorney was not nearly so shy when we visited her Queen Street office today.
According to Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Leonardo is the victim of a manipulative couple who she (Balderamos-Garcia) believes is bent on getting their own way.
While she would not go into details on the record as to why she believes this, Balderamos-Garcia contends that after the initial hearing of the case on November 7, it was adjourned to December 19 despite attempts to move up the date.
On the 19th, there was no court in session because of an all-day seminar hosted by Chief Magistrate Margaret McKenzie (Amandala court reporter Rowland A. Parks confirmed this when we checked with him this afternoon). The case was adjourned sine die (without date) and has not been called back since.
However, Steve Ramclam’s copy of the warrant they supposedly received on that date is signed by Magistrate Roberto Ordonez. Balderamos-Garcia says she believes it is a forgery and has asked police to investigate.
According to Balderamos-Garcia, Leonardo called her around 5:00 p.m. on the 9th to say that she had been threatened by a posse of policemen and a policewoman who supposedly produced, but would not show Leonardo, the alleged warrant. Dolores says she told Leonardo to stay put and advised police of what was going on, as her office had closed for the day and she was on her way home.
The next day, Laura Leonardo attended 7th day Adventist church services in Ladyville, leaving the house at around 7:30 a.m. When she returned five hours later it was to find the door and padlock broken off, and all her household items and items held by her daughter, Yanira Williams, who was planning to open a store in the lower half of the property, gone.
Laura Leonardo lost approximately $75,000 in goods, including $5,000 in cash. $35,000 worth of goods, including bed sets, 10 boxes of shrimp, a black purse with personal effects, etc., disappeared, says the attorney, without trace.
The other $40,000 worth of goods was taken to a storehouse on Krooman Road, where it stayed for five weeks before being ultimately disposed of, as Laura had nowhere to store them. Yanira and her husband Christopher (desktop publisher for Opposition newspaper The Belize Times) lost $117,500 worth of computers, laptops and other similar goods needed for the store.
After making statements to police, Laura left the country for a week to tend to her husband. When she came back she informed her attorney of what happened. Dolores Balderamos-Garcia immediately waded in, calling the Commissioner of Police Gerald Westby, Director of Public Prosecution Cheryl-Lyn Branker Taitt, Ombudsman Cynthia Pitts, and various high-ranking members of the police department, with mixed results until the release of this week’s report.
Balderamos-Garcia said that all she is concerned with is justice for her client.