Belize Ports Limited (BPL) chief executive Luke Espat gave interviews to both Channel 5’s Stewart Krohn and Channel 7’s Jules Vasquez this evening. Lucas was responding to a Godfrey Smith column in the issue of THE BELIZE TIMES published earlier today, a column which blew the whistle on a problem between BPL and the cruise shipping giant, Carnival, a problem which the Hon. Minister of Tourism (the said Smith) described as a “schism” which “appears to be irreconcilable.”
Lucas categorically denied the “irreconcilable” description, which, if it is true, would blow up his $50-100 million cruise ship port deal in Port Loyola. Carnival is supposed to help finance this monster project. But Lucas, the classic PUP insider or crony, has been spending and investing other people’s money for a long time, and the word in business circles here has been that, from the beginning of the Port of Belize acquisition, Luke has been fronting for Ashcroft dollars.
For Lord Ashcroft to bankroll the Luke/Carnival deal, however, would, in a sense, involve the Lord going eyeball-to-eyeball with the megamillionaire Michael Feinstein and his Stake Bank cruise tourism project. According to Hon. Godfrey, Royal Caribbean, another major player, prefers the Stake Bank option. Our sources say that Luke met for almost two hours yesterday with the Lord at the banker’s residence next to the Radisson Fort George Hotel.
According to Minister Smith’s column, “For Stake Bank to be feasible it must be designated as a port to be able to collect taxes to repay its loan.” But Belize Ports Limited has a contract with the government which prevents GOB from issuing “any other commercial port licences in Belize without giving BPL the right of first refusal …”
The irony here is that GOB, in the person of the Hon. Prime Minister himself, appeared to break an “exclusive” contract with Diamond International (formerly Mike Feinstein/Royal Caribbean) at the Tourism Village when Mr. Musa signed the agreement for the Carnival deal with Luke Espat and a Carnival representative in April of 2004.
In his interviews this evening on national television, Lucas lashed out at GOB as “indecisive” and failing to honour agreements. The knife which stuck the Tourism Village sheep in April of 2004 is sticking the Belize Ports Limited goat in January of 2007. It would be humorous if so much money and so many jobs were not involved.
The Minister of Tourism claims that cruise tourism is contracting in Belize and that a cruise ship dock “is critical if Belize is to remain competitive.” As it is, Carnival is now refusing to give a guarantee that its ships will use Lucas’ proposed port facility.
Hon. Smith in his column presents the competing arguments for Luke Espat’s port project and Mike Feinstein’s cruise ship facility. He ends by suggesting that GOB should engage Carnival, “at the highest levels, to find out what, if anything, can be done to salvage the project.” Such an “engagement” would, it seems to us, involve going over Lucas’ head. This is one of the things which is making the irascible Luke very irate, indeed.
For those of us who are environmentalists at heart, we just don’t give a damn about any of the principals involved here. Environmentalists believe that the greedy men will end up damaging and perhaps destroying the very product – the pristine Belize Jewel, which has created the cruise ship tourism demand.
It is not environmentalists who run Belize, however. The Government of Belize has created yet another tangled web. The beat goes on …