Stake Bank Battle Reaches Caribbean Court of Justice
The long-running battle over Stake Bank has now reached the Caribbean Court of Justice. Businessman Michael Feinstein wants the region’s highest court to consider new evidence that he says could expose serious flaws in government’s decision to compulsorily acquire twenty-three-point-four acres of his property. But attorneys for Stake Bank Enterprises and Atlantic Bank argue that the evidence changes nothing and that the land was needed to complete the cruise port project. The CCJ must now decide whether the Court of Appeal was right to reject Feinstein’s bid.
Anand Ramlogan, Attorney-at-law
“The chronology in brief is that on the fourteenth of June 2024 there was a report commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism and that was just mere in short time before the compulsory acquisition process started on the 26th of August. The claim was filed in this matter on the 9th of September 2024, it was dismissed in January 2025. The appeal was filed on the 12th of February 2025. Mr. Feinstein got a hold of this report sometime in July 2025 and the application before you was filed on 17th October 2025, seeking leave to adduce fresh evidence and subsequent disclosure. That application was dismissed on 24th April 2026. Because of that we now find ourselves before the Caribbean Court of Justice.”
Dean Barrow, Attorney-at-law
“The second limb of the test is whether the evidence that is now sought to be admitted which was not before the Court of Appeal and before the High Court, whether admitting that evidence ought to be allowed, because if the evidence was before the Court of Appeal and the High Court, it would have had an important influence on the outcome.”
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney-at-law
“It is a comparative analysis of two specific port projects for the purpose of enabling the ministry to inform its decision making regarding the two projects. I repeat, the purpose of the acquisition was to enable the completion of the Stake Bank project.”
The Caribbean Court of Justice reserved its decision for a later date.
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