The Belize Development Trust was successful in it´s projects by volunteerism.

My apologies Trevor. I thought you were making things up. Well I suppose, the Belize Development Trust is ALL OVER THE INTERNET. That stuff never gets wiped out. Even so, I don´t understand where the prosecuting guy TIMMONS is coming from? The Belize Development TRUST didn´t have any employees that is certainly true. But many TRUSTS do not. Ask any rich kid living off TRUST FUNDS, administered by some TRUST administrator guru at a local bank. The bank charges an administration fee, for trust handling per annum. Or any incidental expenses. There are no employees for most TRUSTS on record, anywhere, far as I know. As TRUSTEE I managed, but never collected any fees for it. Was not employed either. Pure charity volunteerism. TRUSTS are one way of creating a legal entity, that stop individuals from being sued by nuisance suits. Trusts have many purposes, but basically they are a legal entity, like a company, but without the need to do bookkeeping, licenses, taxes and stuff like that, as they have no employees. I had my bicycle and a car one time in the USA owned by different TRUSTS. No employees either, just a legal entity listed and registered as owner of the vehicle. I have another trust still active in the USA, owns a 2.5 acres ranchette. You don´t have to sell the property, just change the TRUSTEE name to the new owner, without going through the laborious work involved of buying and selling and bureaucratic paper work. Fast and simple legal transfers of objects.

Sounds like the guy TIMMONS was an ignoramus. Guess he tried looking up some kind of company records, of which there would be none. Certainly not here, or in the USA, or any other country. If he is prosecuting, taking liberties with insinuations would be normal for an uneducated jury I guess?

The Belize Development Trust itself, was an attempt at a time in the history of Belize, back in the late 1980´s I believe, to encourage and show by example on the local Belize scene, that locals could start NGO TRUSTS for charitable purposes. At that time, the media were complaining about all the FOREIGN RUN NGO´s in Belize, coming in from foreign countries and doing stuff in Belize and raising money from their home foreign countries, to do such work. I was preaching at the time, we could do it ourselves and if you had that kind of NGO, you could also raise capital from abroad to do so. The Belize Development Trust came about as an EXAMPLE and educational project. The most remarkable followup on that line of development was the establishment of TIDE by Wil Mahier, who successfully established his NGO. There have been many since, and today, MOST ngos in Belize NOW are organized and run by locals. There are some foreign NGO´s organized abroad still in Belize, but the project we had was to introduce the idea and education, on how to do it here, by locals. Instead of the media of the day ( weekly only newspapers then ) complaining incessantly about foreign NGO´s working here in Belize and making salaries and expenses off it, using development work in Belize as their mission goals. The educational development project worked by example and many Belizean NGO´s did start up and are running today, successfully soliciting money from abroad for development projects. Providing local jobs and employment. We´ve done so many development projects, in the TRUST name, I tend to forget them in my old age.


From: tc vernon
To: bz-culture
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 1:20 PM
Subject: Bz-Culture: "Belize shell companies" named in USA racketeering case

Innovatebelize@gmail.com wrote:


From: innovate belize
To: hillviewhacienda
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 6:21 PM
Subject: Belize Development Trust ?

Cobb County jurors on Tuesday deliberated for a second day in the case of a man accused of stealing more than $2.5 million from an elderly woman in an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

Frank Constantino is on trial in Cobb Superior Court for 29 charges of racketeering, theft, securities violations and elder exploitation.

* * *
Timmons also hit Constantino hard on cross over his long list of businesses that the state contended were shell companies to fool potential clients. Timmons listed them one by one and asked Constantino how many employees each one has: Atrium Financial Group, Atrium Holding Company, Atrium Investment Partners, Belize Development Trust, Belize Land Developers, Granite Financial, Mercer Builders, Mercer Marina and Yacht Club, Plantation Villas, Vision Capitol, Atrium Secure Annuity and World Vision. Of those, only Atrium Holding Co. had employees, according to Constantino, who said it had three at its height. And he said Plantation Villas at one time had three to 10 workers. All the others, Constantino said, had no employees.

Constantino's counsel contended that the investments in Belize were real but simply didn't produce the returns he expected. Marquez showed the jury photos of a hotel and marina development under way.

But Timmons called the project "a camp ground in a third-world country," and said that dirt roads and a hotel that "is not the Ritz-Carlton" would not constitute a successful resort development even if completed. He also said that foreign investments make it impossible for most investors to investigate and that third-world countries provide scam artists with convenient excuses for lack of progress because of different laws and cultures.

Marquez suggested to the jury that the case never should have been in criminal court and is simply a dispute between two business partners. "This is a contract case," he said in his closing. "The state has made it into a criminal one."

The civil case is expected to move forward as soon as Bodiford schedules it. While the criminal indictment put the total amount of money in question at $2.5 million, the civil complaint alleges that Cox has been defrauded of $2,787,666. The civil complaint also asks for punitive damages.