Belmopan City Council Faces $2M Losses from Questionable Land Discounts

The Innovabel Estate saw its grand opening by the then Mayor Sharon Palacio in June 2021.  The initial information given at the launch was that each plot of land would run around twenty thousand dollars with a required down payment of two thousand dollars.  Fast forward three years later, however, a new city council cited several questionable documents, receipts and transactions that revealed that some people were allowed to pay as little as one hundred dollars per lot.  The deep discounts have set the council back by some two million dollars as explained by Mayor Pablo Cawich.

Pablo Cawich, Mayor of Belmopan City: “Reviewing the accounts we started looking at the valuation of some of those lands in the Innovabel area and some of the payments that had been received and we had noticed, and the $2,000 is just an example. There were different percentages of discount to different people.”

Reporter: Can you confirm if some lots sold for a hundred dollars per lot ? 

Pablo Cawich, Mayor of Belmopan City: “I can confirm that. I’m not sure how much I can divulge but yes there is one particular councilor that got more than one. The entire Innovabel project when it came to the land distribution sales and approximately just under a $2 million dollar loss in revenue. What we found was the lands in question had a value of $20,000 adjustments were made to the value without any documentation or reasoning placed in the adjustments. Just to use the $2,000 as an example an $18,000 adjustment was applied as a credit which we can’t see where the funding was coming from because obviously nothing came in, it was just an adjustment. The $2,000 was paid in some instances after title has been received. One of the relatives I think that person got around sixteen, sorry eight. It’s more about the ethics behind it and all the council is focused on is trying to ensure that we can collect the lost revenues.”

While our newsroom has received documentation that seems to be falsified, Mayor Cawich says he prefers the term, ‘fraudulent’.  Several land owners under the Innovabel Estate have spoken to our newsroom off-the-record confirming that what was printed on the receipts far exceeds what they actually paid.  Love News learned that the Belmopan City Council continues to reach out to the land owners with a goal of having them pay the difference between what was paid and the value of the land.  According to Cawich, most of them are prepared to do so.

Pablo Cawich, Mayor of Belmopan City: “We mentioned fraudulent declarations. The example of that is that the $2,000 that was paid for a land here was declared that the person paid $20,000 to the Ministry of Natural Resources. We have reached out to everyone that was not a regular case and in case where it was a regular case and the person had stopped their payments that was the level we initially started at. We contact them and said you were approved a piece of land, we noticed you have started paying but payments have stopped are you still interested in the land if you are please come in let’s make a payment plan so that you can continue with your payments until the full value has been paid. Majority of them have agreed to a payment plan to cover the balance. I can’t say with any surety that everyone has received their titles. What we do know is many have received titles, some of them as I mentioned the receipts for the council would show that some of them paid after receiving the title as well. The stance we have taken with every single recipient is that we are not attempting to try and take away any opportunity. If for example you had received eight parcels all we would do is to ask you to create a payment plan to ensure that you are paying the full value of the land and where we would try to rely on is your ethics and your morals knowing that a piece of land in Belmopan is not worth $2,000.”