A company called Sagis Investments was created, claims a witness in the case of Sagis vs KREM, for the single purpose of investing in a company named KREM Ltd. This investment took the form of a loan of $75,000 to purchase equipment and $25,000 to purchase 10% of KREM’s shares.
A cheque for $100,000 was issued by Sagis against its account in the Belize Bank Ltd. made payable to Radio KREM, and certain documents were issued and signed by the appropriate authorities of Sagis and KREM to validate the agreement.
The person who negotiated these transactions and agreement on behalf of KREM was a member of its Board of Directors. He was friendly to the hierarchy of the People’s United Party, and the other directors including the manager thought that the Party was interested in improving the quality and range of KREM’s radio signal because they were gearing up for the general elections due to take place in 1998. The transactions and agreement took place in 1994.
In 1994 KREM was a struggling business (being subsidized by Amandala) because Radio Belize had been converted to the Belize Broadcasting Authority. Radio Belize was the only radio network with a countrywide signal and was dominated by the government. The people yearned for another avenue by which they could obtain news and information. The United Democratic Party was the government, and the Opposition People’s United Party decided to make free radio an issue in the 1998 elections. They had already given KREM Radio a license to operate when they returned to office in 1989 after their terrible defeat at the polls in 1984.
The Prime Minister, the Hon. Said Musa, had been friends with the Publisher of Amandala and chairman of KREM’s Board of Directors, whatever the fortunes of the People’s United Party, to which Mr. Musa belonged, from the late sixties.
When KREM’s manager, also a member of the Board of Directors, received the cheque, he asked both Evan X Hyde and Rufus X, which of them would sell their shares to Sagis, in order that he might issue either of them a cheque for $25,000 payable against KREM’s account at the Belize Bank. He could see no other way to complete the transaction. Only those two shareholders had enough shares to divest themselves of 10% of the total shareholding of the company. They both refused, and there the matter lay.
There was another matter which was discussed by the directors mentioned in the previous paragraph. The question was how would KREM be able to pay back the loan when it was barely surviving, and it came out that the director who had negotiated the loan was assured that Sagis would have ads placed by the Belize Bank on KREM Radio and discount payment for the ads against the loan until it was settled.
But, later on, Sagis decided that they would prefer ads to be placed in the Amandala newspaper instead, for obvious reasons. Amandala was the newspaper with the largest circulation and they would get better value for their money. So, it was done. Evan agreed and an arrangement was worked out between Amandala’s business manager and a certain member of the Belize Bank’s staff and, full page ads praising Belize Bank and its services were placed in Amandala weekly for a period of over three years starting in 1994.
Nothing more was heard from Sagis from 1994 until 2007, when their lawyers sent a claim for the $75,000 loan plus interest compounded over the thirteen-year period and a demand for a registered certificate of 10 percent of KREM’s shares in the name of Sagis Investments. After it was pointed that the loan had been repaid long ago and the proof was in the Bank’s records plus the ads in the newspaper for which no payment was made by the Bank, and knowing this to be the case, Sagis tacked to leeward and placed all their bets on getting the shares which they had purchased and not received. Not received, but also never sought for thirteen years.
When the manager of KREM paid the $25,000 offered by Sagis into the company’s account, he was quite sure that the matter of the handing over of the share certificate would be resolved within a reasonable time. What possible reason could a buyer have for failing to demand what they had paid for in advance? To wait a year would be considered an unusual grace period. But, to wait two, three, four …. thirteen years, would suggest that there was something else that mattered more to the purchaser than the shares and, in this case, it is very clear what it was. It was the goodwill of the Chairman of Radio KREM and Publisher of Amandala. Nothing should interfere with that goodwill, which was worth much more to the Principals of Sagis than $25,000. Now that that goodwill has been lost, Sagis wants the shares not as a friendly investor, but as a hostile neighbour. And, Sagis believes that it can succeed because it has unlimited resources and can appeal the case up to the Privy Council, which could destroy KREM. Surely, there should be some principle in our justice system which could prevent a litigant from succeeding in his objective because he has unlimited funds to spend on appeals.