Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

The Jamaican Government says it has special security arrangements in place to ensure that unauthorised treasure hunters do not attempt to salvage Spanish galleons, believed to be at the bottom of the sea off the island's south coast with up to US$1.5 billion worth of booty.

"The Government of Jamaica has taken steps to secure the area," the Tourism and Culture Minister, Aloun Assamba, told Parliament yesterday, answering questions previously posed by Opposition Leader Bruce Golding.

"We depend upon the coastguard's patrolling of the area. We have not publicly indicated where these vessels have been found," Assamba said.

The Jamaica Defence Force, of which the coastguard forms a part, could not not immediately comment on the special security regime to which Assamba referred.

Licence to trove

The Government in 1999 granted a U.S. company, the Atlanta-based Admiralty Corporation, a licence to trove the waters around the Pedro Banks, south of Jamaica, for sunken Spanish bullion ships and recover the treasure. Of special concern at the time was The Genovesa, a vessel that left Spain's New World colony of Cuba in 1730 laden with treasures but went down in a storm. The Genovesa's cargo was valued at US$400 million.

The Government's decision was controversial on two counts: there were claims that the bidding process was not transparent, as well as complaints that administration, even as it prepared to sign the document, was ready to breach a UNESCO convention banning the salvaging of treasure ships in national waters.

Admiralty's agreement with the Government eventually lapsed two years ago in the midst of recriminations, with the salvaging company accusing Jamaica of hampering its work, while Kingston complained that the U.S. was failing to fulfil its obligations. It had not introduced the requisite technology that would have made the salvage procedure environmentally safe, Government officials said.

Ships detected

But by this time Clarence Lott, a senior Admiralty official who was overseeing the Jamaica operation, was claiming that its surveys had detected four other ships, some of which were believed to have sunk in the 1500s. By now Admiralty was placing a value of up to US$1.5 billion on the ships' likely cargo.

Yesterday, responding to Golding's questions about Admiralty's estimate and the company's quarrels with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, Assamba stressed that the figure was, up to now, speculative.

"This is speculative and remains unverified as nothing has been recovered," Assamba said. "Nor has any shipwreck or other heritage resource been properly identified."

But while stressing that salvagers would require special equipment to find and recover the wrecks, Assamba indicated that the Government was taking no chances, notwithstanding that value of what may be on the ocean floor might be vastly overstated.

"It is because we are very concerned about pirates why we have not at this time gone further with exploration there (in the area of the Pedro Banks)," she said.

Exploration efforts to recover the cargo and treasure would go ahead some time in the future, Assamba said.