Photo: Hugo Patt and Dean Barrow at Senate Special Select Committee Meeting, Feb. 28, 2024
by Marco Lopez
BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Feb. 29, 2024
Seven companies acquired nine 50.1-acre parcels of land from the Government of Belize on November 4, 2020. Hugo Patt, former Minster of Lands, and his attorney, senior counsel Dean Barrow again appeared for the sitting of the Senate Special Select Committee yesterday, where Patt was questioned on these transactions which took place under his watch.
During the sitting, it was revealed that all the parcels are located on the east of Northern Lagoon, the proposed Portico cruise port site.
All of the 50-plus acre parcels were sold at the price of $5,300 each, save one, which was sold for $33,192. The lands were acquired by seven companies, all of which had the same director, Sunjay Hotchandani. Early this year we reported on two parcels acquired at the project site by Sean Duncan and David Morales on behalf of Nyne Enterprise Limited – again bought from the government for only $5,300 each.
Senator Bevin Cal, in his questioning, shared that according to a Lands Department evaluation, coastal lands should be sold at a rate of $4,000 per acre.
“Mr. Patt, with simple math, 50.1 acres of land, on coastal lands is valued at $200,400. All of these were sold for five thousand three hundred dollars. To me that sounds like a lot of revenue lost by the government of Belize during your tenure,” Senator Cal said.
One of the parcels, sold to a company named Key Star Limited, owned by Sunjay Hotchandani, was purchased from the government for $33,192. This was sold to Portico for just $15,000. Two other parcels bought were sold to Portico for $15,000 dollars according to the presentation by Senator Cal.
Patt, in his response to Cal said, “While the question is irrelevant to the Definitive Agreement, I will have to state for the record that the social rates the ministry applied then had been there for time immemorial. It is not something I instituted. But, as the former Minister of Natural Resources, I saw it as my duty to ensure that each and every Belizean gets a portion of land at a very affordable and social rate.”
Cal retorted by highlighting that thousands of Belizeans are still without a single lot or any parcel of land, yet these companies were allowed to receive these large tracts of land at huge discounts and in record time.
In questioning by the senators, Patt was asked about his involvement in the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Investment during the UDP administration. He said that he was a member but did not attend any meetings. Minutes shared by Chairlady Senator Janelle Chanona, however, highlight that he was present for at least one such meeting, although he denied that to be the case.
While Patt was more cooperative than the other client of senior counsel Barrow, Wilbert Vallejos, who gave a blanket “no” to the questions of the committee during the last sitting, he too shied away from answering a significant number of questions.
The documents from the Ministry of Lands presented by the Senate Committee revealed that over 450 acres of land were acquired by the Hotchandani companies. Patt, under oath, said that as former Minister of Lands, all final approvals had to pass his desk and get his signature. Despite this, he refused to answer any questions relating to the transactions that moved the large swath of land east of Northern Lagoon from being national estates into private ownership. These lands would eventually make up the proposed project site for the Portico cruise port. This project was blessed by the Royal Caribbean Group on the basis of a highly suspect “Definative Agreement”. In 2023, the questionable agreement was reportedly tabled from the PUP’s Ministry of Investment to the Briceño Cabinet where it was trashed and later exposed to the public.
This Senate Special Select Committee was formed to investigate all dealings related to the signing of the faulty agreement and its subsequent tabling to the PUP Cabinet.