G.O.B. Loses Millions in Revenue to Real Estate Scams

Since the murder of businessman Ricardo Borja in 2023, a spotlight has been shone on massive real estate scams taking place across the country.  This afternoon, the Minister of Natural Resources spoke at length on what’s been taking place with private real estate transactions that have resulted in the Government of Belize being cheated out of millions of dollars in revenue.

 

Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources

“It’s scary when you consider that persons have died and quite possibly linked to these things.  You‘re dealing with a different level of opportunism and different level of criminality and a different level of wickedness altogether and I don‘t know that you necessarily can liquidate that, can destroy that in the shortest possible time.  I think it‘s about us trying to get our structures in place where we get it right about trying to have some regulations that will regulate these real estate cats because the truth of the matter is that they‘ve been having a free run at it for the longest time and these guys are so-called land agents and they also pretend to be attorneys and financial experts and all kinds of stuff and they are very clever, very smooth and savvy because they are able to convince very wealthy people to get off their money.  I can tell you that in these cases, we‘ve had to collaborate, cooperate with the police and try to assist as best as we can with these investigations.  We‘ve done our own internal investigation of lots of these accounts. In the Borja case, we‘ve reviewed over three hundred transaction instruments that Borja and his consulting company, I think it‘s J.C. Consulting or something, that they actually presented to the Lands Department.  Eighty percent, damn near eighty percent of those were incomplete.  They triggered some interaction, got an instrument number but they never followed through because they came, they triggered an interaction with the Lands Registry and through that process they are able to get what would be the relevant fees, the relevant duties that have to be paid but they don’t come back.”