Court of Appeal Overturns $2.1 Million Payout Against GOB

The Court of Appeal has overturned a $2.1 million judgment that the High Court had ordered the Government of Belize (GOB) to pay in compensation over a disputed land sale.

The ruling, delivered on Friday, August 29, in the case of Rudolph Ramirez & Anor v. Attorney General, reverses a January 2024 High Court decision that awarded compensation to Ramirez and business executive Julius Zabaneh.

At the heart of the case was 14.76 acres on Cats Caye in the Stann Creek District, which GOB sold to Ramirez in 2008. Ramirez later sold the property to Zabaneh. However, the land had already been sold by the Government three years earlier. When the title was reissued in 2019, questions arose about whether the purchasers were entitled to compensation.

Ramirez and Zabaneh initially sought $8.9 million, claiming market value compensation, citing the precedent set in the Andre Vega case, where GOB paid $400,000 to Vega after mistakenly selling land that had already been privately owned. The High Court, relying on that precedent, awarded just over $2 million to the claimants.

The claimants appealed, arguing that the payout was insufficient. But GOB, represented by Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay and Assistant Solicitor General Samantha Matute, countered that the claimants knew the land was no longer government-owned when the title was reissued, disqualifying them from compensation.

The Court of Appeal agreed, noting:

“For the grant of land which was clearly no longer national land and thus not in the Minister’s power to convey, the State (and by extension, taxpayers of Belize) would be liable to repay a party who knew of the true state of affairs, millions of dollars in damages. In my opinion, no procedural rule could justify or should be allowed to enable such a perverse outcome.”

The Court stressed that the Vega case should be confined to its specific facts, particularly since Vega had no knowledge of the earlier sale.