This afternoon, Prime Minister Dean Barrow gathered his most senior advisers to discuss their strategy to deal with the Ashcroft Alliance's legal fees connected to the BTL acquisition. As we told you last night, a very big legal bill is coming. Well, we understand that Government received the full and final total from the Ashcroft Alliance yesterday evening - and while we don't know what it is at this time, we repeat that it is in the tens of millions of dollars.
But, to clarify what we first reported last night, those legal costs are not on top of the acquisition costs: they are claimed against the 60% of the entire settlement figure. That 60% represents the amount owed through the accommodation agreement. In settlement talks, the Prime Minister had proposed to use that 60% for social projects in Belize - and as we understand it, Ashcroft agreed to do so, once legal costs are first settled as part of that 60%. But now, we are told those legal costs are amounting to almost all of that 60% figure.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said this is against the spirit of what they agreed and government won't pay:...
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"There is no way this was an agreement to pay any at large sum that the Alliance's imagination could conjure up and so back to the CCJ."
We expect to learn that final figure for the Ashcroft Alliance's legal costs next week.
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