G.O.B. hires another pricey lawyer for U.H.S. case

Ben Juratowich

Government is reportedly acquiring the services of another lawyer; he is Ben Juratowich, Queen’s Counsel from a British Law Firm Freshfield Brauckhaus Deringer. He will be representing the Government of Belize in the upcoming U.H.S. case at the Caribbean Court of Justice on March fourteenth. Juratowich’s C.V. features extensive representation of governments in international cases from the International Court of Justice and elsewhere. He is expected to command big money, adding even more expenses to a cash-strapped administration which committed to fiscal responsibility only last year. The government will be seeking to overturn plans by the Belize Bank Limited to have the court grant an enforcement order for the forty-million Belize dollar loan which the C.C.J. told the Bank it could collect last November. With interest the total amount has climbed past ninety million dollars. But the government is weighing its options on whether to proceed with a vote in the House of Representatives to approve an appropriation bill for the funds, to which several parliamentarians have objected.