7 News Belize

Government Will Ignore US Court Crowfoot Ruling
posted (March 28, 2018)
We also asked the Attorney General about the Ashcroft Alliance's victory in the US District Court of Colombia. As we told you last week, the court has granted an enforcement order against the Government of Belize to crowfoot it's assets to settle a judgement in that court.

The Attorney General told us that from the Government's perspective at this time, that US Court's decision is an empty judgment which, as far as they can see, has no effect:

Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"Yes I am aware of the judgement. We expect to go the way it did. We don't expect the American courts to rule in our favor. They have demonstrated a pattern that they don't even respect the CCJ which is our final court. So it's no surprise to us. But we have, as far as I know we don't have any assets to crowfoot. I am also aware of the fact that they've been trying to do this for some time and we expected that at some point they will attempt to do this. So, like I said it comes as no surprise, but we don't have any assets abroad that they can crowfoot and I pretty much would like to see that it's an empty judgement."

Daniel Ortis, reporter
"But sir facilities such as embassy outreach missions, aren't those assets of Belize that can be touched?"

Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"No they can't. Under the Geneva Convention the embassies are off limits completely and we've already established very clearly that Central Bank and Government are two different things. So they cannot touch any of the assets that have to do with the Central Bank. But like I said, we expected them to do that and we are not worried about any assets being out there that they can crowfoot, because we believe that there is none. What we will say is that we have a matter pending before the CCJ that has to do with this very same 90 million dollars. We will respect our courts. Our court is the CCJ and whatever ruling that they pronounce then we will respect that ruling. We will at the very least acknowledge that ruling and respect that ruling. Any ruling by the Ashcroft Alliance in the United States, while we are not saying that it is irrelevant and we won't pay attention to it - that's not our court."

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