New Frontiers

• Published date: 12 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Finance and Banking, Government, Public Sector, Financial Services, Inward/ Foreign Investment, Constitutional & Administrative Law, Money Laundering
• Law Firm: Information Management Solutions Limited
• Author: Mr Ian Moncrief-Scott

Yet again the Government of Antigua & Barbuda is reaching new frontiers of disrepute.

Not only has it ignored the basic requirements of its Constitution to ensure payment of prompt and proper compensation for its unique version of the expropriation of foreign-owned private property, it now acts in utter contempt of court.

In October of 2020, during a hearing of a legal action for enforcement brought against the Government of Antigua by HM.B. Holdings Limited, the GOAB gave a Court Undertaking that it would not dispose of any assets until the outcome of a court decision regarding the outstanding compensation, which has remained unpaid for 14 years, following the expropriation of the Half Moon Bay Resort from its rightful, private foreign owners.

Then, on 24 March 2021 the Government announced that it would be selling 10% of its shareholding in the West Indies Oil Company to Caribbean investors. breaching the Undertaking given to the Court

The GOAB's first response was to claim an innocent and inadvertent error, easily corrected by replacing the breached undertaking by a new one, reflecting the diminished number of shares to be held in abeyance of the Appeal Court's decision on a claim still awaiting a High Court decision.

This argument received no traction.

In an attempt to justify the breach, a campaign was launched to contend that "Everyone" knew about the Government's long-standing intention to sell a portion of its WIOC holdings and that the shares now offered for sale were never included in the Court Undertaking.

It was so well-known that the GOAB's primary lawyer failed to specifically exclude it in the GOAB's official Court Undertaking.

It was so well-known that no-one in the Government Administration noticed it. It was so well-known that no-one even mentioned it.

It was an aberration, a mistake, a miscommunication and an unintentional disrespect of the Court.

When this campaign began to lose ground, the GOAB fell back on its tried and trusted "Poor Country" card that has served it so well many times over decades.

It even weaponised Covid 19, blaming the global crisis for it having to breach the Court Undertaking in yet another recently overused "escape of responsibilities" mechanism.

When even that argument failed to impress, Prime Minister Gaston Browne claimed that the Court did not have a legal jurisdiction to override a Finance Minister on the prioritisation of any debt to any debtor and to determine where the payment will come from, especially...