The Belize Bank and BCB Holdings, companies under the control of British billionaire Michael Ashcroft, have demanded their $43 million plus interest, approved in the Belize Supreme Court in December 2009 by recently departed Supreme Court Justice John Muria, who ruled that the August 2009 arbitration award, issued by the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) in favor of the companies, could be demanded from the Government of Belize.
Senior Counsel Michael Young told Amandala that on Wednesday, January 5, 2011, he filed an application for appeal. Young also saidthat he is additionally asking the court to grant a stay of execution on the Muria decision; however, he has no idea when that application would be heard.
Barrow had told the media on January 5: “I was sent a draft of the grounds of appeal from our counsel Mr. Michael Young last night, and I see that he’s up to 14 grounds.”
Muria had rejected government’s objection to the enforcement of the final arbitration award, in which the government had argued that the award is contrary to public policy and, because of illegality, it cannot stand.
Describing the arbitral decision in the UK, as “a clear hometown decision,” Barrow also took issue with Muria’s stance that Government would have had to establish an argument that, to allow enforcement of the award would “shock the conscience” or is “clearly injurious to the public good or wholly offensive to the ordinary reasonable and fully informed member of the public.”
Barrow said that, “…when he [Muria] will say, for example, that on this question of public policy, you establish public policy if you show that the agreement that led to the award that is now being sought to be enforced would have ‘shocked the public consciousness,’ and that he didn’t think that that kind of arrangement would shock the Belizean consciousness—I have to say that I am confident that our prospects on appeal are absolutely encouraging and I will leave it there.”
The Government and BCB Holdings/Belize Bank had been at odds over a 2005 agreement, later amended, which purported to award tax concessions to the companies as a part of a settlement of a dispute over the repurchase of shares in Belize Telemedia Limited.
Muria’s 52-page judgment said that, “…pursuant to the Arbitration Act, BCB Holdings and Belize Bank are at liberty to enforce the LCIA Final Award in the same manner as a judgment or order to the same effect as the Final Award.”