Tomorrow is International Anti-corruption Day - and Belize's independent media is using the opportunity to laser in on the recently rolled out Belize Companies and Corporate Affairs Registry (BCCAR) and the Online Business Registry System (OBRS).
It's hailed as an innovation that streamlines and merges the companies registry and the IBC registry, promising, quote, "a proper regulatory and economic environment for business." But, tonight, media veterans are raising a major red flag on that - they say that it covers what should be a public registry under an impenetrable cloak of secrecy that facilitates corruption.
The issue is that the regime of secrecy that is required for the offshore sector has now been transposed unto the register of regular Belizean companies and businesses - thus also blanketing those in secrecy - making it impossible to know elected official or political insider is a shareholder in a company that - for example - has been awarded a public contract.
Today, three news directors, Channel 7's Jules Vasquez, KREM's Marisol Amaya and Plus TV's Shasta Wade had a joint pass briefing via zoom to discuss the effect of this and to call for its reversal.
Jules Vasquez, News Director, 7News
"I thought that registered agents, who pay at least a minimum of $1,500 US - I'll send you all the charges - fifteen hundred US, but a maximum of five or six thousand US. You have to pay in US dollars - and the reason you have to pay in US dollars is because it's an IBC registry. Everything is paid in US dollars. So, local attorneys have to pay that amount in US dollars. I thought that because they pay this five thousand US, they would be able to do company searches still. Well, they cannot. They can do a search, and all you get is what is called, under the law, a short extract. And a short extract will only tell you when the company was formed and who its registered agent is. It does not tell you the directors. It does not tell you the shareholders. It does not give you any useful information. It basically tells you who are the attorneys that set up the company."
Alindy Marisol Amaya, News Director, KREM News
"I am completely opposed to this new way of doing things. I think it is completely anti-democratic. As has been pointed out previously, it goes against all those good governance principles that this administration came in on a platform of. And I'm not sure how we are going to proceed because even now, in talking with the Deputy Director, he is saying that we can discuss it. But it does not appear to me that they are willing - any at all - to consider giving the media access to everything we had before. And I do not think we should settle for any less."
Shasta Wade, News Director, Plus TV News
"I am not in agreement with this new change at all, either. I've spent several hours at the registry, and it was always a free process. You just need to give the name of the company that you want to research. You find the number, they get the files for you, and you go through it. If you get stuck and you find the next company, you go to that one. You can continue your research for many hours, totally free of cost. I personally think that this new change is really, indeed, counterproductive to the freedom of information. It makes it very much difficult to research, especially as Jules has been talking about. It makes it easy for corruption to happen, and if we want to be able to research things that are questionable, all of these hoops that we will have to go through, and the money now that will be involved. It makes absolutely no sense."
Jules Vasquez, News Director, 7News
"It is so deliberately obfuscatory and anti-transparency, and it is deliberate. They knew what they were doing. They knew the effect of it. They knew they were imposing the secrecy of the IBC regime. They were imposing that on to the public register of companies, to blank that in secrecy, to forever keep secret whatever transactions that related companies may get involved in. It is sinister. It is retrograde, and I believe it has to be undone. It has to be reversed."
