After what I have just heard I feel I need to make a statement.
I am the owner of Protech, and am currently on a brief visit to the UK - I'll be back in SP in just over a week.
I have just been told by an hotelier, the fourth to date, that Steve Lee has told him that Protech is closing down. No doubt he also said that he has taken on the staff of Protech and so anyone who used to dive with Protech should now dive with his new dive center, Ecologic Divers. They are the subject of another thread on this board, "Need Help - Docking Rights", where he is riding roughshod over the legal rights of another highly regarded dive operator.
Let me say once and for all that Protech is not closing down. Very far from it, in fact. Nor am I in any way severing my direct control of it.
It's interesting that Steve has waited until I'm off the island before spreading his vile rumours. As recently as Christmas Steve was diving with Protech and saying how good everything was and generally seeming to be a nice guy. At the same time, I now know, he was poaching two instructors from Protech, and they left Protech since I left Belize a couple of weeks ago without saying a word to me.
I suspected before and now I know that Steve is deliberately spreading what he knows to be lies about me, because he thinks that by destroying Protech his business will take off and he will magically acquire the reputation Protech has built up by damned hard work. He is directly trying to persuade hoteliers to transfer all their Protech business to him, using total and direct lies to achieve this. He is a rich bully who thinks that money can buy him respectability.
Read also what he is doing to Everett Anderson, who certainly does not deserve such treatment. San Pedro is a small community, and indeed the diving community isn't vast either. I hope and believe that word about Steve Lee and his doings will spread rapidly, and he will find that people aren't as gullible as he seems to think.