The legal fight over which mega cruise port will control the Belize District's cruise tourism future is still continuing. And, this morning, representatives from all 3 of the major developers: Stakebank/Port Coral, the Port of Magical Belize, and Waterloo Investment Holdings Limited, were before Justice Lisa Shoman in a virtual hearing.
As we reported several months ago, the principals behind Port Coral have gone to the court to complain that the National Environmental Appraisal Committee and the Department of Environment did not make a sound decision when they gave the necessary environmental approval for Magical Belize to proceed to the next phase of development.
They are now trying to convince the Supreme Court to reverse that approval and quash that decision by the DOE and the NEAC.
After an initial skirmish between the attorneys for the Stake Bank and Port of Magical Belize, the judge ruled that the claimant had an arguable case for judicial review.
We fast forward to today, where the Attorney General's Ministry, is attempting to convince the judge to strike the case out of court completely. That's because, in their opinion, the claimant's judicial review claim was filed outside of the deadline set by the judge, and as a result of that flaw, their case is not properly before the Supreme Court.
At this time, there are quite a number of litigants. Stakebank is the claimant, and the respondents are the Attorney General's Ministry, the National Environmental Appraisal Committee, and the Department of Environment.
There are also 4 interested parties who have joined this case: Portico Enterprises Limited, Waterloo Investment Holdings Limited, Belize Cruise Development limited, and Belize Logistics Terminal Limited.
The attorney for the claimant has strongly argued against the government's submissions for striking the case out. He submitted to the court that the government and other litigants treated the case as properly before the court. He pointed out that the marshaled evidence in defense of the claim, and now, the Attorney General's ministry is now coming at the 11th hour with this technical argument, which was available many months ago, as sort of an afterthought.
Attorneys representing all of the litigants have given their views in the hearing, and the judge is expected to make a decision tomorrow.
We'll tell you what's the outcome of this ongoing legal fight over cruise tourism for the Belize District.
