When the Prime Minister held his big press conference yesterday, he was flanked by Dr. Carla Barnett and Senator Godwin Hulse. They are both now parts of the Barrow Administration, but back in 2007 - they were in the eye of the Universal Health Services storm. Dr. Barnett was the financial secretary and Hulse was the business Senator and Chamber President. We know what Hulse was doing since he was front and center, but as a senior contract officer at the time - we don't know that much about Barnett. But we do know that she abruptly quit right when the Universal revelations were reaching scandal proportions. Yesterday she gave us the backstory:....
Hon. Carla Barnett, Former Financial Secretary - Musa Administration
"And in doing the debt restructuring one of the things we had to was take a survey, a collection of all of the information on every debt and contingent debt of the government of Belize and so we asked everybody who government did business with what government owed you, what guaranteed. It did not come up."
"So when I said at the time that there was no government guarantee, is because we had done the work to find a government guarantee and we did not find one. It either didn't exist or it was well hidden."
"On the 2nd May 2007, I had the then Cabinet Secretary bring a letter to me and this letter which Senator Hulse referred to a while ago was making a demand for payment on a settlement deed between the Belize Bank and the government of Belize, dated 23rd March and the related loan note of the same date. Well I never knew anything about that and then I wrote a note to the Cabinet Secretary saying I know nothing of this. I have been trying to reach the AG, but have been unable to reach him."
"At any rate, this cannot be basis for making a payment of any kind. If GOB signed a settlement deed and a loan note on the 23rd March, 2007, it would have been in contravention of the finance and audit act."
"Those of you who followed these things in the media knows that it is about this time that I resigned as financial secretary."
"The interesting thing about the resignation and it's not a story that I've told in the public. I resigned and I gave my 3 months' notice as required under my contract. So I resigned and I was supposed to leave at the end of August and then there was a public statement by the then Minister of Finance and Prime Minister to a question I remember hearing Jules Vasquez ask him:"
FILE: May 10, 2007
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporter Newspaper
"Why didn't you tell the Financial Secretary?"
Rt. Hon. Said Musa
"Because I didn't think it was necessary at the time. Maybe as the question earlier was posed on regret, regretfully maybe I should have. I am prepared to accept that."
Hon. Carla Barnett
"That day I walked down the corridor and I told the secretary 'when he comes back please let me know, so I can go and talk with him' and so I went over when he came and he tried to explain and I won't say what he said. He can respond to that, but I said to him 'you know I have to leave, right.' He said but you already resigned. I said I know, but I am not waiting until August, I am not staying 3 months. He said okay, alright, so when do you want to leave? I said when I go home this evening I am not coming back."
"For me at the time it was not only that we had just negotiated the superbond on the basis that all debt had been accounted for and clearly in my mind, if you are saying that you did not tell the FS about this, because it was not necessary, my fear was well there may be more. That was one fear. But the other fear was that we had just spent the time and the energy and put people through all kinds of adjustment policies, because of this same kind of borrowing and as we had concluded it and it was all wrapped up nicely and the ink was drying, we began to do the same thing again."
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