Last night on this newscast you heard Prime Minister Dean Barrow saying
that he isn’t playing with Michael Ashcroft and the Belize Bank. The Belize
Bank as we’ve reported loaned BTL US$22.5 million when it was under the
previous management – the debt was secured by a mortgage debenture and
when government acquired BTL, it also acquired the debenture. So government
says it has taken on the role of the bank and BTL now owes the government –
not the bank. As for the bank, government’s argument is that they’ll
get paid when BTL compensation is shared out.
It’s quite a tangle, which is probably deliberate because the
fuss distracts from the fact that in the first place, taking out the loan did
not benefit BTL. The Prime Minister explained yesterday.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“That US$22.5 million, I don’t anybody has asked what the purpose
of that loan was, what the monies were used for. Those were monies used by the
previous owners to enable a wholly owned subsidiary of Telemedia to buy additional
shares in Telemedia which then went straight across to Ashcroft interests or
in some measure to be used as dividend payments, as property conferred on some
of the then current holders of shares in Telemedia who again are all Ashcroft
controlled entities to give them additional shareholding, additional bounty.
In other words in a year when the profits of the company are $30 million,
you borrow an extra forty odd million dollars so that you can enrich yourself
and your friends and associates and companies that you control leaving Telemedia
saddled with the debt, leaving Telemedia saddled with the expense that has been
incurred so that you can enrich yourself. It is absolutely diabolical.”
But however questionable the motivation – the terms of the loan
are there in black and white. And now Belize Bank and its parent company the
British Caribbean Bank are pointing to the loan agreement to say that Telemedia
defaulted on that loan when government acquired BTL. The British Caribbean Bank
has invoked terms under what is called “events of default” –
and those events are failure to make payments on the loan and a change in the
ownership structure of BTL. And so by the bank’s reasoning, BTL has now
defaulted and the full $22.5 million has become immediately due and payable.
The bank has filed an action in court to get its money.
As you’ve heard, government’s solution to that is to have
the Minister of Telecommunications Melvin Hulse execute an executive order to
make it clear that the Belize Bank can make no claims on BTL for the US$22.5
million loan. In fact, the Prime Minister told us yesterday that while the bank
is seeking compensation for the US$22.5 million, even that compensation is in
question.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“They have lodged a claim for compensation. Whether they will get
compensation amounting to anything like US$22.5 million is all together another
story because indeed we feel that there are all sorts of things that are illegal
about that particular loan and the circumstances in which it was incurred and
you can rest assured that we will mount any challenge to the validity of that
loan and that that will certainly underpin our resisting the claim for compensation,
at least in the amount that they would no doubt claim.”
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