7 News Belize

Gandhi Says Francis Fonseca Fibbed
posted (June 17, 2013)
And that is not the only interesting statement on the registries takeover tonight. The legal advisor in the Ministry of Finance, the enigmatic Gian Ghandi has made – to our knowledge – the first public statement of his career.

Ghandi who has been legal advisor in the Ministry of Finance for the last 13 years came up last week because in 2003 he wrote a letter to Belize International Services Limited of behalf of the Musa Administration saying that the Registries contract could not be extended for a number of what appeared to be very valid reasons – reasons still valid today including the European Union's concern over the Ships Resgistry.

But in 2005, the then Finance Minister Said Musa went against that advice and signed a 10 year renewal and a 7 year one after that, taking the life of the contract up to 2020. The leader of the Opposition Francis Fonseca who co - signed those agreements went on record last week to say that the legal Counsel in the Ministry of Finance was consulted before the letter granting the extension was signed.

Well, in his statement today, Ghandi says that at no time was his advice sought on the validity of the extension and that the first time he saw it was last month when it was produced by BISL.

Fonseca also said that the matter went to Cabinet for discussion – a claim that two Cabinet members form that time have disputed in conversations with our Jules Vasquez.

Well, Gandhi's statement says that he has quote,

"carefully looked through the Cabinet Briefing Notes for the period 1st January 2003 to 31st March 2005…and found absolutely no mention of extension of term of the Management Services Agreement for the IBC and Shipping Registries,"
end quote.

For balance, we note that Cabinet briefing notes are those documents which are used to debrief CEO's on the day after Cabinet meetings are held – and the matter of a contract extension may not come up in those notes.

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