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John Zabaneh, He's not been in the news for almost a year and a half since he granted an interview to 7 News in which he complained that the Drug King Pin designation that the US Government placed on him in August 2012 was destroying his businesses.

Well, it appears that his prediction is slowly coming through. Mayan King Banana Farm, his mother's banana company, located in South Stann Creek, is one of the largest Banana operations in the south, and it hires anywhere between twelve hundred to 2 thousand employees in the high season.

But, right now, the company is struggling, and the drought, has been destroying their banana crop as well. The company would have normally been able to weather this storm and keep all its employees paid by an overdraft facility - but, you can only get an overdraft form a bank, and because of the Kingpin designation, no bank will do business with Zabaneh.

So, today Maya King – the biggest Banana farm in Belize couldn't meet the over two hundred thousand dollar payroll for its 1200 staffers. And now the farm is at risk of laying off 600 of its employees. This evening, Zabaneh, who claims to have taken a hands-off approach at the management of the company, explained the difficulties to us. Here's what he had to say:

John Zabaneh

"This year has been substantially different, the drought continued even worse than the normal drought period. High, high temperatures and because the prices are lower, a lot of us could not afford to irrigate properly. And even irrigation does not make up for rains. But we still with probably the lower cost and we have to be buying diesel; a lot of these farms and say most if not all the farms are affected by this drought. To the point I would say it's like a Hurricane hitting the industry; to that level. We are not even making 50% of the payroll. The difference between the other farms and us is a big difference. Because where they are able to access banks for over drafts and loans; and this is how in the past this company had gotten through these rough times. Over drafts, loans, so forth and it's all the banks; including DFC, Social Security. We have dealt with all these banks at some time or the other even in times of Hurricane. And the brought us over. So that's where the difference is between us and the other farms. We're in quite a sticky position where since we cannot do that."

That interview was conducted very late this evening, and our news team arrived back shortly before news time. We'll have more for you tomorrow from Zabaneh when you'll hear him discuss what he's been trying to do to get the drug King Pin designation removed by the US Government. Plus we'll challenge the new manager and ask him if he is simply being controlled in the background by Zabaneh and his family, just so that it appears that Zabaneh is no longer the man in charge.