Three weeks ago the BTB blitzed the local media with news and ads about tourism week. Every message underscored the theme that regular Belizeans were in on the tourism product at all levels, from policy to ownership to management to service professions. But that message rings terribly hollow for one local resort owner who has been systematically chanced, swindled and hustled out of his dream development. Carlos Popper is one of a handful of upscale local resort owners. He owns and operates the very successful 5 Sisters Resort in the Mountain Pine Ridge area. He's one of the only born Belizeans who've managed to survive and thrive in an area and market level dominated by foreign interests.
He's self-made and his expertise is home grown; matter of fact, he could be hailed as a model of local talent with international flair. But when Popper tried to parlay his success from the rainforest to the reef, that's where his string of success ended. And it wasn't because he invested recklessly, it's because he ran into carpetbaggers that carry Cabinet credentials working in tow with sloppy surveyors. Tonight we'll tell you how his dream of the beachfront resort called Zacil Ha, a Mopan Maya term meaning "crystal waters," dissolved into a murky mess. Here's his story of a million dollar hustle.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
Today Carlos Popper stands on the beach, looking on in bewilderment at the resort that he designed and built with his own hands, his own money. But this 63 feet of beach reserve is as close as Popper can get to the property legally because the place he named Zacil Ha, is no longer his; Popper was forced to sell it for a fraction of what it cost after he was caught in a land hustle orchestrated by two ministers of government. It's a long and sad story but one that began simply enough in late 2002.
Carlos Popper,
"In 2002 I was approached by Mr. Leslie from the government he asked me if I wanted to buy apiece of land in the Turneffe Islands."
Leslie, then a Minister of State in the Ministry of Natural Resources, took
Popper on a fishing trip to the Turneffe Island range. He bought him here to Ropewalk Caye.
Carlos Popper,
"Right away when I saw this I said to myself this is what I am looking for, this will complement my business so I can offer to my tourists, to my guests, a reef and rainforest packages."
But there was one problem - he had to buy the land.
Carlos Popper,
"He told me that the property belonged to Minister Baeza, Servulo Baeza, and that Baeza wanted to sell the property so he was trying to help him find a buyer for it."
So Popper entered negotiations with then the Minister of Health - Servulo Baeza.
Carlos Popper,
"He told me that, yes, the property was up for sale and he wanted x amount of money."
That amount was $150,000 for 5 acres all with sea frontage. All Popper had to do was pay the money and Minister Baeza would make the rest happen in record time.
Carlos Popper,
"He transferred the lease in my name, I got the documents for that, and then after that we got a title from the government through his office, he was the minister of state at the time."
Jules Vasquez,
How long did that take?
Carlos Popper,
"He did it in a day, in one day we got a title for this property."
Jules Vasquez,
Did you find that's surprisingly fast?
Carlos Popper,
"Yes I did. Obviously he used his office to facilitate the whole process."
Baeza used his office and Popper used his checkbook.
Carlos Popper,
"Three payments were made to Mr. Baeza. The first one he collected himself in Belize City, we met at a certain spot that we had agreed on and I gave him the first check, which if I am mistaken was for $35,000 which was a down payment until all the documentation was done. About two or three weeks he received a second check, he also instructed me to write the checks in the name of his driver, some Briceno."
That Briceno is Guillermino Briceno, Baeza's driver and these are the checks that he was paid; $45,000, $40,000, and $75,000 adding up to $150,000. With title in hand, work on Popper's dream resort commenced with continued facilitation by Ainslie Leslie.
Carlos Popper,
"About a couple weeks after that we decided to come out here again and
this time we came out with Liston McCord."
That's the same Liston McCcord who has since pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in the United States, for facilitating trans-shipments of drugs for Mexico's Juarez Cartel. But at the time he worked at the Fisheries Department and in his private time was the captain for Anslie Leslie's boat, and the point man on the sale.
Carlos Popper,
"Mr. McCord came out with us, this was all filthy and everything, its not nice and beautiful as it is today because this is work that we did, he showed us the marker over there, and we notice it had approximately 450 metres of beach front which was very nice to us, for what we were looking for."
With that, the work of building a resort commenced in early 2003. He showed
me around the compound to show what he had conceived. Using the lessons he learned at 5 Sisters, Popper crafted what would be a dive resort. Featuring ten cabanas and a main restaurant and reservations area, the hook for this resort was that it was within swimming distance of the reef, and within proximity to 15 of the country's best dive spots. To take his visitors out on those dives, Popper bought this 38 foot boat and another just like it.
The grounds were painstakingly landscaped and promotions were sent out to travel agents informing them that the resort would open soon. Advance buzz was also generated in adventure travel destinations publication, the Magnum Belize Report where Zacil Ha was featured twice. Indeed, expectations were high, but it all came crashing down.
Carlos Popper,
"One day when the project was finished we got a visit from a gentleman who says he's from Blue Creek, a Mennonite from Blue Creek by the name of Jacob Teichroeb, and he came here, I was not here on the property at the time of his visit. My workers called me right away and told me that this gentleman had come to claim that he owned this property and that we were on his property and that he needed to see the owner. So when he got back to Belize City he called me on the telephone and we spoke and I said there must be a mistake, I have a title for this property. He told he also had title for the property and that something went wrong."
Very wrong: this is Teichroeb's title for the land, 47 acres and Popper's 5 acres are within that. Impossible it seemed but it was simple enough, a massive surveying error had been made which the surveyors themselves discovered.
Carlos Popper,
"I brought the surveyors out here and that's when they realized an error had been made by the surveyor who surveyed the property."
A colossal error, but it seemed a recoverable one.
Carlos Popper,
"At that point my Teichroeb told me not to worry about anything, that he is easy to deal with and that we would work it somehow, that we could even become business partners if we wanted to, or that the property was up for sale anyway and if I wanted to buy the property or whatever. I still didn't take it very seriously because I thought since the Minister was involved, who I bought it from, that they could do something about the whole issue."
And so he went to that same minister, Servulo Baeza, to plead his case.
Carlos Popper,
"So I paid him a visit after that and he didn't seem to be very happy about it. He got very concerned and he called Minister Leslie and told him about the whole issue. They were a little nervous."
And when they got nervous he, got worried.
Jules Vasquez,
What was going through your head?
Carlos Popper,
"I was very very worried because I am thinking I could lose my resort, my whole investment here, I have over $900,000 invested in this property, so I was very very worried."
And he had reason to be worried. Baeza told him that he would be able to compensate Teichroeb, the rightful owner, with another piece of land elsewhere and while he negotiated independently with Teichroeb to buy the land for a million dollars more, that prospective deal suddenly fell apart.
Carlos Popper,
"Later on we found out that Teichroeb was doing something else behind me my back and then later on they passed an injunction so that I could not come to the property. I don't know what happened but my attorneys did not advise me about the case for the injunction and the injunction was actually passed in court."
Jules Vasquez,
An injunction which barred you from entering...
Carlos Popper,
"My own property."
Jules Vasquez,
Which was not really your property.
Carlos Popper,
"Yeah which was in dispute."
And with that the dispute was over, he was ordered to remove all erections from Teichroeb's land. But what went wrong, how could he have been on the wrong piece of land when no less than the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources sold him the land?
Carlos Popper,
"We brought out the surveyor and what the surveyor discovered was that coordinates were not matching. When he studied the whole island and he brought maps from other properties on the island, he found out that the property that should have been our property was being reflected further to the south of this island."
That would be here, a quarter mile to the south of the island. There's some beach but most of it is a mangrove swamp, useless for resort development.
Carlos Popper,
"First of all a boat can't even get in there, the water level is so low that the boats cannot get in there, and all of it, the front is all mangrove swamp, it doesn't have any beach or anything. Its not resort so I would not have bought that in the first place."
So how did the original surveyor confuse the two parcels? That's what Popper had to find out.
Carlos Popper,
"I went back to the surveyor who initially surveyed the property, Mr. Guido Chulin."
Jules Vasquez,
And he is the surveyor who Minister Baeza...
Carlos Popper,
"Who Minister Servulo Baeza and Ainslie Leslie had contracted to survey the property. When I brought Chulin out here, he confirmed to me that he had surveyed this property but that what happened is that the Ministers were in such a rush to get this property surveyed that what they did was Minister Leslie had handed him a map for another private individual who has a property on this island and told him that this property was next to the one that he was surveying and that he should tie it into property. So the surveyor did not really do his homework, he didn't go back and check."
Jules Vasquez,
He used a faulty reference, he was given a faulty reference.
Carlos Popper,
"Yes he was given a faulty reference and then he didn't check himself, he didn't the research on his own."
And that surveyor Guido Chulin has sworn to this in this affidavit, he says: "Minister Leslie took me and my crew out to Rop walk and showed me the place pointing out exactly where to where he wanted the boundaries." He continues: "the survey I did was at the instructions of Minister Leslie and free of cost..." He further states that: "Minister Leslie gave me Janine Sylvestre's map...(which I) used because Minister Leslie told me that he had already done the research." So by Chulin's own signed and sworn admission, he didn't do his homework and was led into the mistake by Minister Ainslie Leslie.
So one Minister either knowingly or unknowingly misled and another sold the land, but still Popper had no recourse to the government.
Carlos Popper,
"When we had learned this and Minister learn of the mistake, he thought, in his mind, that they were not at fault because he told me personally that I had made mistake myself, that I had been shown the wrong property but that government was willing to compensate me with another property elsewhere even after I told him I had invested almost a $1 million on the property. He told me cannot do anything about it because the government cannot acquire for private purposes, only for public purposes, so there's nothing we can do about it. I tried to give them an advice and said maybe you should call in Mr. Teichroeb and maybe you could work something out with him and so he could be relocated rather than me, I have almost $1 million invested here, how am I gonna move just like that."
But he had to move and that's when he started writing letters to anyone who would listen, the Minister of Finance Ralph Fonseca, the Prime Minister, the Hotel Association, the Minister of Tourism, but despite all this.
Carlos Popper,
"Everybody turned their back on me."
After a year of running around he was out of options ordered off property by December 28 and like an undertaker, in entered Papi Pena.
Carlos Popper,
"We were desperate, we were thinking of salvaging something so he said that the only problem is that he could only give me fifty cents to the dollar and I said what about development, what about landscaping, what about the work we had done here. He said that's my problem and he has nothing to do with that, he just wants to buy the buildings."
And that's where the dream all evaporated, he sold Zacil Ha for a massive loss and left it all behind. This January day was his first time back along with boat captain Isaiah David Bonner, who worked on the project for three years, and made about 400 trips to Ropewalk Caye.
David Bonner,
"The work that w e actually did here is so much that actually takes me really sad about the whole situation now. I had a hand in building the place and now it's just not the feeling that I really like anymore so I'm very disappointed about this whole thing basically."
Jules Vasquez,
Right now today we are trespassing.
Carlos Popper,
"Yes we are trespassing on the property. I feel bad about that, I feel, every time I come out here it really hurts me to see that we lost the property just like that. This was something that I dreamt, I got it completed to where I wanted, I was seeing my dream, and finally in the end it just went away like it went up in smoke. What's so sad about is that the government is promoting tourism in Belize, promoting local entrepreneurship, and here I am, one of the few Belizeans trying to do something good for the country, we were going to employ 25 people. Twenty five people would have gotten employment here."
Jules Vasquez,
Do you feel that if you were a wealthy foreign European or American investor and you'd been caught up in such a hustle, I am calling it a hustle, do you feel that the government officials would have been more responsive to your complaints?
Carlos Popper,
"Definitely. I didn't have anything to offer and that's one of the reasons why they didn't you know...."
And his Attorney Dean Barrow agrees.
Dean Barrow, Popper's Attorney
"That there was a hustle is undoubted."
Barrow argued the case to keep Popper on the property and lost. But he says there are excellent grounds for success in a civil suit against Baeza.
Dean Barrow,
"Mr. Popper's remedy is now against the Minister, against Servulo Baeza, not against the Ministry, not against the Lands Department, but against Servulo Baeza personally. In my view Mr. Popper will be able to recover damages for all the losses that he has incurred, he will be able to recoup all the expense he incurred with respect to building of the hotel, which has now had to be dismantled and removed, and he will be able to recover damages for the loss of the property, in and of itself."
Barrow says, Baeza should never have been involved in the deal.
Dean Barrow,
"The fact is that in my view ministers should not have been charging members of the public $150,000 for their personal pockets in order to facilitate the transfer to of title to pieces of land."
And now, as he's watched his dream slip away from him, through the fog of a land hustle, Popper remains bewildered.
Jules Vasquez,
Is there a moral in this whole story for you?
Carlos Popper,
[Laughs.] "I don't know Jules, I don't know what happened here. I don't know if I am at the wrong spot or I was probably not the right guy for this area or whatever. I don't know what transpired."
And as sure as his footprints will be washed away by the lapping waves of the Caribbean Sea, so too goes his dream of Zacil Ha, a place of crystal waters, now turned murky by unforgiving political misdeeds.
After trying and failing at finding land in San Pedro, Popper says he has given up on owning a beach resort. It's not known what Pena will do with the buildings, but it's clear that he has reached some agreement with the landowner Jacob Teichrob because the buildings are still there, and apparently there to stay, even after the court ordered that they should be removed by the end of last year. That is government's reaction to all this? Well tune in tomorrow when you can hear what Minister of Natural Resources John Briceno has to say about the allegations against his political ally and junior minister Servulo Baeza.
