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Relations between the Michael Ashcroft business empire and the government of Belize are very tense tonight after an afternoon of dramatic developments. We’ll tell you about everything that’s happened in the last 8 hours to bring things to a boil so quickly. But we begin with the bottom line, which is that there is currently a warrant out for the arrest of Belize Bank President Phil Johnson.

This afternoon at 4:35, officers from the Crimes Investigation Branch went to the Belize Bank’s downtown branch at Market Square to execute that warrant, that is, to arrest Phil Johnson. Led by the officer in charge, Superintendent Julio Valdez they went inside, checked if Johnson was there, found out that he is not in the country, and left after about 5 minutes. So that arrest warrant stands this evening and Phil Johnson, President of the Belize Bank is wanted by police.

How did it come to this? Well, it all started this morning when the Chief Justice delivered a judgement which found very decisively against the Belize Bank. As we reported in mid–July, the Belize Bank went to the Supreme Court basically to get relief against an order issued by the central bank on March 14th. That order demanded the refund of US$10 million in Venezuelan grant funds.

The Belize Bank’s argument to the court was that their right to appeal that directive was denied and that the Central Bank’s Board of Appeals was not independent and impartial. That’s because while the appeals board is chaired by Justice Samuel Awich, two of its members are appointed by the Prime Minister – who has publicly declared that the Belize Bank should not have the money.

With that, the bank argued that its constitutional right to an impartial hearing was being denied. A complex case, and it took three days to argue through the thicket of technicalities. But this morning, when the Chief Justice issued his decision, he took an hour and a half to demolish the Belize Bank’s arguments. He found that there was no bias in the appointments to the Appeals Board and that the bank had not been denied its rights under the constitution.