BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Nov. 29, 2018– Since 2012, the Turneffe Atoll has been Belize’s largest marine reserve, and it has been co-managed by the government as well as by the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association (TASA), a non-governmental organization (NGO). The Belize Federation of Fishers (BFF), an organization that represents fishermen associations across the country, is alleging, however, that since 2016, TASA’s board members may have been acting outside of the laws that govern NGOs by appointing two senior GOB officials as executive members.

It should be noted that, according to the NGOs Act, Chapter 315 of the Laws of Belize, NGOs, such as TASA, “shall be independent of Government control in its operations and management.” Yet, Lindsay Garbutt, Director of Civil Aviation, sits on the board as the chair, and Beverly Wade, the Fisheries Administrator, is the vice-chair.

Garbutt is on the board as the Conservation Expertise Representative, due to having previously served as the operations manager at the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE).

With Wade, though, there appears to be a conflict of interest. While she had already been on the board, she was there as an ex-officio member with no voting power. Since 2016, however, she reportedly replaced the BFF as vice-chair.

Wade was then given voting abilities, but she also represents the government due to her position in the Fisheries Department, and, additionally, she is responsible for signing the co-management agreement between GOB and TASA.

A few months after Garbutt and Wade took office, Valdemar Andrade, a representative from the Belize Tourism Board (BTB), which is also a GOB statutory body, became the executive director.

These three have been operating as the executive members of the board for reportedly over two years, from April 2016 until now, seemingly in defiance of the NGO Act, although it was not until 2017 that the company’s record reflected the current board members.

Additionally, in 2017, Garbutt, Wade, and Andrade are believed to have amended the Articles of Association, as the Company Registry Files for TASA reflect.

Originally, 9 members were supposed to make up the board: 1 representative of the Belize Fishermen’s Cooperative Association (BFCA), 1 representative of the BFF, 2 tourism representatives with primary businesses on Turneffe, 1 representative from the University of Belize (UB), 1 representative from the Turneffe Atoll Trust, 2 recognized persons of conservation expertise, and 1 private landholder.

After the Articles of Association was amended in April 2017, the board then comprised of 7 members: the representative from BFCA, the representative from BFF, a representative of BTB, the representative from UB, the representative from the Fisheries Department, a representative of the tourism private sector of Turneffe, and a recognized person of conservation expertise.

In the amended board of TASA, the representative from the Turneffe Atoll Trust was completely disregarded, and a representative was added from the BTB.  Until the change in board members took place in 2016, Wil Maheia had represented the trust and he had sat on the board as the chair. He was, according to our sources, asked to step aside due to his “anti-government” activism.

Controversially, a Special Resolution, which is needed before any changes are made to the Articles of Association, was decided upon unlawfully, our source told us, and thus can be considered null and void along with any resulting amendments to the Articles.

In the Notice of the Special Resolution, which is dated April 7, 2017, it is stated that “at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the company held on the 3rd day of February 2017… the following resolutions were passed as Extraordinary Resolutions and at a meeting held on the 3rd day of February 2017… were confirmed as Special Resolutions.”

In order for a Special Resolution to be passed, three things must have happened: the recommendations for the amendments should have been presented to the board with a 15-day notice prior to the meeting; there had to have been an attendance of at least 75% of the members at the meeting; and 2/3 of the members would have had to vote in agreement to the Special Resolutions.

According to the source inside the BFF, none of these occurred.

Since TASA’s members are seemingly in violation of the NGO Act by having 3 of 7 members as functionaries of GOB, this could lead to that NGO potentially losing its Certificate of Registration or losing the tax privileges of a registered NGO under the Act.

Moreover, the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve receives its funding through donors, who generally have strict rules as to their funding, and any violation of these rules could be seen as grounds for either cancellation or cessation of funding, and even a demand for the return of funds since April 2017.

The marine reserve receives the majority of its funding from Fundación Bertorelli and, in the past five years, has received more than US $5 million from them. If TASA has indeed been operating outside of the law, it begs the question as to what that means for everything that has been done since 2016/2017, including how that money was handled.

We attempted to call TASA for comment, but were unable to get through to them. We later learned that Andrade, TASA’s executive director, is not in the country at the moment.

We were able to contact Garbutt, however, and he told us that he thinks the allegations that he should not sit on the board because he is Director of Civil Aviation are “nonsensical.” According to him, his Civil Aviation position and his position on TASA are completely different and do not interfere with each other.

He continued to say that he sits on the board because of his long-time work with other NGOs, including, as mentioned before, TIDE.

He also mentioned that, in the case of Wade, they had looked at her position closely before appointing her as vice-chair. Garbutt said he has no issues with the fact that she also represents GOB and sits on TASA’s board.

Additionally, Garbutt said that when TASA made their “strategic changes,” they hired a junior attorney from Youngs Law firm who had guided them, but now they have hired a senior attorney to ensure they are following the proper process of making the amendments.

Garbutt also turned the tables around, accusing the BFF of having ulterior motives for pushing the issue regarding his and Wade’s positions on the board, even going so far as to claiming that a non-BFF member is the person behind all of it.

He continued to say that BFF’s former deputy chair, Dale Fairweather, attended 10 out of TASA’s 11 meetings, and never had any objections to anything. He also said that TASA has invited their current chair, Mark Thompson, to participate in the current board meetings.

Furthermore, he challenged the allegations that he somehow stole Maheia’s position as chair and said that, in fact, Maheia had stepped down on his own accord and had actually nominated him, Garbutt, to take his position. Garbutt said that he happily went to serve on TASA’s board because Maheia was a part of it, and he wanted Maheia to continue to serve on the board.

When we contacted Maheia, he said that he did not remember exactly what transpired when he left TASA, but he does know that he was not wanted on the board because of (as mentioned before) his anti-government activism, especially concerning rosewood logging. Whether he was asked to step aside, or he actually resigned, though, is not clear to him.

Maheia also said that there is a possibility of him having resigned for the sake of TASA’s development, since he did not want to cause problems for the organization.

Still, though, he questions having Wade as the vice-chair, considering her position in the government.

Lastly, we called Honorable Osmany Salas, the Senator who represents the Belize Network of NGOs (BNN), to get his take on the situation. He told us that the steering committee met today to discuss the issue, among others. After the meeting, BNN released a statement in which they said that they are aware of the issue and they are “confident that these two organizations will be able to resolve the governance issues to ensure the effective management of the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve to safeguard its resources and the people who depend on them daily.”

The statement ends by saying that the BNN have been advised that attorneys representing both BFF and TASA are “leading the process at this time” and that any further comment from BNN would be prejudicial.