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The accommodation agreement dates back to 2005 - when the then PUP government was trying to secretly get someone to cover the cost of some Intelco Properties which Social Security had (also) secretly guaranteed. So, they invited the Ashcroft Alliance to step in and take over the 19.2 million dollars in debt. The Alliance had them on the hook - and to make sure they stayed hooked, a secret accommodation agreement was crafted. Among other things, it guaranteed BTL a 15% rate of return, and tied the hands of the PUC. John Briceno was Deputy Prime Minister at the time but he never knew about it - in fact, today he told us that ten years later, he still had not read it! And today he said the Barrow Administration is just trying to deflect blame by using the accommodation agreement:...

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"He now wants to blame the scandalous award on the PUP, a party that has been out of government for over 8 years. Well this is not the PUP. This entire deed is solely the doing of the Prime Minister himself. The reality is that the Prime Minister had over 7 years to settle this acquisition. He could have settled it in 2009 or 2010 or 2011 or 2012 or 2013 or 2014. But he didn't. All along skipping and jumping and dodging and postponing the inevitable. All this skipping and jumping and dodging have cost the Belizean people 198 million dollars in interest alone. While racking up millions of dollars in legal fees."

"The Belizean people have already do their punishment on us. We lost the 2008 elections, we lost the 2012 and we lost the 2015 elections. So you can't continue to beat us on that. The people already ruled on that. We need to move it. It is Barrow that created this problem and now because of his foolishness and his incompetence and his hubris and his arrogance, we now have to pay 550 million dollars plus interest running for a company that's values 100 million dollars. You can't blame the PUP for that."