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As we told you earlier this week, Seafront property owners at the end of Seashore Drive are up in arms today because someone is claiming their seafront view. 

The concerns were raised after Buttonwood Bay residents noticed someone filling up the sea directly in front of their property. We take a look at the story from its inception 12 years ago. Here’s the full report:

Sea-front property in the city attracts premium prices on the real estate market.  But what happens when your sea-frontage, for which you paid top dollar, is no longer on the sea front - but, instead, it’s behind someone else’s property? That’s the concern that a few property owners have in the Buttonwood Bay area of Belize City. 

At the very end of Seashore Drive, Land Department papers show a lot labeled as 4670 under the name Primrose Gabourel, the matriarch of one of the Zabaneh families. But what is land on paper is actually sea. And owners of this controversial lot are well underway in filling it up; something they call land reclamation. But this is not something new. The origins of this conflict dates back to 2005 when Gabourel was given the land certificate for the parcel. Half a year later, in 2006, the property was cautioned by the then Minister of Natural Resources John Briceño. And in the caution letter it said that the property had been sold in error. That is where channel 7 caught up with the story back in 2006. Here is a snippet of that story filed in by then reporter Alfonso Noble.

Dion Zabaneh,
"They issued me a letter and said that the government wants to buy back your mother's land and I spoke to my mom, she is not in the country right now, and she doesn't want to sell. So the last thing she left me to do was fill up the land, just fill it up, develop it, and so. We didn't give them back a response so now we continued to do our filling and they came with all of these things, these games that they play, you know how it is, to stop us."

Alfonso Noble,
“What I am seeing here is sea.â€￾

Dion Zabaneh,
"Well just like Mr. Billy Musa. If you could look over there, take a shot over there, he was the same way. That was just sea the same way and these are lands that have eroded from previous times. These lands used to go way out there but all we are doing is reclaiming land, that's what you call reclaiming."

And that he is and he's very well underway doing it. In two days he's reclaimed a fair portion of land but now that's been halted. He says the stoppage is being enforced because, as he sees it, a name is worth more than all the gold in the world.

Dion Zabaneh- Son of Property Owner
"If they will stop, why don't they stop Mr. Billy Musa over there filling up the same amount of thing. In this country man, it is ridiculous how the harassment and this and that and the games the government plays. On the next right there you got Mr. Joe Coye filled up the whole seafront property there, Mr. Hassan Diab, and so why my mother Primose Gabourel cannot do what she wants with her land. My mother's name, she doesn't carry Zabenah, she carries Primose Gabourel, and maybe if it had carried Zabenah then it would have been a different situation."
And standing behind his mother he says he will continue the work come hell or high tide.

Alfonso Noble,
“Are you going to continue the work?â€￾

Dion Zabaneh,
"Yes man we will continue. We won't stop. We won't stop and we won't let anyone stop us. And if the Ministers want to stop me, tell them to send their gunman to come and stop me. Â 

That same day Zabaneh was served with a court injunction to stop his land reclamation project. 12 years passed, new owners came into the affected lots and all was good; until last week that is. Works suddenly resumed and the property owners of lots 1802, 1803 and 1804 are concerned that their prime sea-front lots are about to become backyard views. 

We got in touch with Dion Zabaneh via phone today, and he told us that they challenged the court injunction from 2006 and won. The injunction was lifted in 2016. Having gotten the green light from the court there is nothing legal at the moment stopping these land-developers to continue re-claiming their lot in the sea - except maybe the Department Of the Environment.  We have yet to confirm with them whether the land reclamation project received environmental clearance. Â  Technically, the seabed cannot be sold as property.