24.5 C
Belize City
Friday, March 29, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

Photo: Students and staff of Stella Maris...

BPD awards 3 officers with Women Police of the Year

Photo: (l-r) Myrna Pena, Carmella Cacho, and...

Suicide on the rise!

Photo: Iveth Quintanilla, Mental Health Coordinator by Charles...

CJ orders GOB to pay Joe Coye $100,000 for Placencia land deal

GeneralCJ orders GOB to pay Joe Coye $100,000 for Placencia land deal
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources Gaspar Vega told Amandala that it’s not over for former Caribbean Shores representative and Minister of Health Joe Coye, who, while in office in November 2005, secured over 20 acres of land in Placencia, Stann Creek, for an investment project at what Vega deems to be a steal of a price.
  
According to Vega, when he came to office in 2008, an acre of similar land was being sold for $10,000 an acre, and they discounted it for ordinary citizens to $5,000 an acre, but if the purchase is for land speculation, for resale, said Vega, the Government charges more.
  
The family of the ex-minister Coye was sold the 20 acres (two parcels of 10 acres) at 10 times less under the former administration, the PUP. Vega said that Coye’s family actually paid 300 and odd dollars per acre, because the $500 per acre price includes a 30% administrative fee that the Government charges on land purchases.
  
Vega’s administration, after it came to office, acquired one of Coye’s two 10-acre parcels, saying that it was doing the compulsory acquisition for a public purpose. Coye sued GOB as a result and Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh ruled this week that Coye’s land should be returned, and that the Government should pay Coye in excess of $100,000, including $75,000 in damages.
  
Government reacquired the more developed of the two parcels, which had been substantially filled. The plot had been developed by the Coye family, in line with their project plans for Aqua World Limited. The company’s Environmental Compliance Plan (ECP) is dated January 2008, just before the change in administration from PUP to UDP, but signed in July 2008, after Vega assumed the Natural Resources portfolio.
  
It was signed by the former minister’s son, Warren Coye, for Aqua World Limited, and Martin Alegria, Chief Environmental Officer for the Department of the Environment (GOB).
  
The plan details that Aqua World Limited is a residential subdivision project located in Placencia, Stann Creek, covering 10.83 acres. DOE had approved the filling of seven acres, with the alteration of mangrove habitat, and the excavation of remaining three acres.
  
Vega said – and Government’s attorney Magali Perdomo had argued in court – that the Government had acquired the wrong parcel of land, the one that Coye’s family had filled extensively versus the undeveloped piece.
  
The Chief Justice did not accept the Government’s claim that it had acquired the wrong piece of land.
  
Vega said that it was the swampier 10-acre parcel that Government was intending to acquire for a public nature reserve.
  
Deputy Prime Minister Vega told us today, Thursday, that he still intends to acquire the other 10-acre parcel, because of environmental concerns over the alternation of such a large portion of the peninsula.
  
It was former Minister of Natural Resources and former Deputy PM, Johnny Briceño, now Leader of the Opposition, who had granted Coye’s family the fiat back in November 2005. He told Amandala Thursday that Coye’s son, Warren, had been conducting the business for Aqua World, and not Coye himself.
  
“Obviously, he [Coye] was doing it as an investment to make a profit. Let’s be frank and honest,” said Briceño. However, Briceño said that ex-minister Coye had, since the first PUP term from 1998 to 2003, expressed interest in pursuing a series of subdivision projects, which, according to Briceño, would benefit others as well as create employment and make developed lands available at an affordable cost.
  
There was a sentimental reason for the investment, said Briceño, noting that Coye’s wife, Yvonne, is originally from Placencia.
  
Briceño told us that he cannot exactly recall what the land was sold for. He also said that no one else had expressed interest or environmental concerns over the development when the application was under review.
  
Briceño told our newspaper that he had approved Coye’s purchases of what he described as “deep swamp” based on recommendations from the Placencia Village Council and the village lots committee.
  
Vega said that as far as he is aware, Coye is the only ex-minister who had undertaken land purchases for subdivision projects.
  
Coye and another former Minister of Natural Resources, Florencio Marin, Sr., had been taken to court unsuccessfully in 2009 in misfeasance suits, accused of causing a $924,000 loss of Government revenue for a subdivision project in West Landivar, Belize City, under Cheop Enterprises inside Caribbean Shores, Coye’s former constituency.
  
Amandala also understands that the Government of Belize has been advised by one of its attorneys to appeal the Chief Justice’s decision, in which he ordered GOB to return the 10 acres to Coye and pay him in excess of $100,000 in damages and costs. (A written copy of that decision was not available from Conteh’s office when we checked today.)
  
Prime Minister Barrow thinks that it may be better for the Government to pay Joe Coye, conceding that it was the Lands Department that made what Barrow described as a “horrible mistake” in acquiring the wrong parcel of land.
  
Coye told the media that the UDP administration took away his land simply because of “vindictive hate.”

Check out our other content

World Down Syndrome Day

Suicide on the rise!

Check out other tags:

International