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Well now - those arbitral decisions matters have gone from a European tribunal to knocking on the government's front door…. A 40 million Belize dollar arbitration award granted to the Belize Bank at the London court of International Arbitration can now be enforced in Belize. That's the upshot of a decision handed down today by the Belize Supreme Court.

Eamon Courtenay, attorney for the Belize Bank
"We came to court and asked the court to recognize that award and to allow the bank and BCB to enforce it. Mr. Justice Muria has now said that, that award can be enforced in Belize as if it was a judgment of the Supreme Court of Belize. The government had opposed it saying that it was contrary to the public policy of Belize - the accommodation agreement was contrary to the public policy - and therefore this court should not exercise its power to allow the enforcement of it and our submission to the court is that the argument as to whether or not it was contrary to public policy was an issue that was to be dealt with in the arbitration. The government chose not to participate; they can't come now on enforcement application seeking to argue. The essential thing that now occurs is that the persons who are the beneficiaries of this judgment of the court of Belize will now take steps to ask the court to name an individual in the government who is responsible to pay the amount by a date certain."

"I think it's a very high risk strategy for the government to say they are not going to participate in the arbitration because arbitrators are going to proceed in the absence of the government and so the consequence of that decision is that you get an award like the one that we got enforced today and government cannot raise the issues that they should have raised in the arbitration. The result is that you have an independent judiciary who give decisions like what Justice Muria gave today and says 'No, you should have participated; you didn't participate; there is an award; now pay it'." Speaking with the Prime Minister today he said the judgment is very disappointing and very bad news and he blames the PUP for giving away such huge settlement deed concessions which in his view have to be illegal. He says government will file and file appeal as quickly as possible."

Justice Muria also handed down another significant judgment this morning. It deals with the constitutional challenge to the Supreme Court of Judicature act which imposed fines of no less than fifty thousand dollars and/or imprisonment of no less than five years for certain kinds of contempt of court involving only companies.

When the case was argued in September, both sides brought in world-renown experts to present their cases including former Attorney General of the United Kingdom Lord Peter Goldsmith.

Well today Justice Muria handed down what we gather is a highly technical, 50 page judgment. Conceding that he had not gotten into the intricacies of it, Courtenay said he felt it was substantially in his client - the Belize Bank's - favour based on what had been struck down:..

Eamon Courtenay, attorney for the Belize Bank
"Mr. Justice Muria ordered that 3 sections of the law be struck down as being unconstitutional and my quick reading - I will say that, "quick" - is that it has to do with those provisions which allows the government to come to court to get an injunction to restrain people from conducting arbitral awards and for trial in absentia and that type of thing, he seems to have struck down most of those parts. The essence of it is that we were arguing that is a government enters into agreements to go into arbitration and then people go to arbitration you can't change the law in Belize to say if you have a dispute with me you must have it tried in Belize and if you don't, I am going to get an injunction against you and if you violate that injunction I am going to start proceedings for you to go to prison."

Speaking with the Prime Minister today he said that quote "what for me is critical is that the criminalizing of the contempt remains intact." He added that "Once a (resident) company does not abide by any injunction - the sanctions are severe."