Ten days ago we showed you BTL's annual general meeting. We expected it to be controversial - after all the company has to pay 98 million dollars to settle the debt for what started out as a 45 million dollar loan with the Ashcroft Alliance. Or so we thought….the chairman of the BTL board announced to shareholders that they would only be paying 48 million dollars - the rest, as they explained would be placed on an indefinite moratorium. But, what does that mean? The Prime Minister explained today:..
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"I intend in the next administration to write off in so far as BTL is concern, the balance of those payments that we have made on their behalf in terms of the BCB loan. 19 million came from Petrocaribe, 10 million came from BTL. They up fronted that from their own resources. A small portion came from what was left over from the proceeds of the sale of shares. Remember we paid to the Ashcroft Alliance at the NERA value for as a down payment on the compensation. If the tribunal say otherwise, that is a down payment and we took that out of what we had. We sold shares after the acquisition at $5 per share. There was a balance after we took out the amount to pay down on the compensation about 4-5 million. So we use that and then the rest of it came from the dividends that we had already collected from BTL, but which has been frozen by the CCJ. With the falling away of the claim, that money was available to us. So we did not have to go borrow anything other than the 48."
Jules Vasquez
"However, isn't that using public funds for private debt and the same goes BTL has its own, they make a lot of money? They could pay off that thing."
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"They make a lot of money which i shared in terms of dividends, in terms of the profits with government and people."
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