Prime Minister Fights on Over B.T.L. Settlement

Is the Government conceding that the former owners of Belize Telemedia Limited have triumphed in relation to the second payment of the B.T.L. settlement? It is due later this year and part of the hefty price tag has to do with the Accommodation Agreement scorned by Government. There is a dispute as to the actual quantum and how much is payable in U.S. dollars, as well as what the arbitration awards contribute. The Prime Minister accused Lord Michael Ashcroft himself of reneging on their Miami agreement by dragging the arbitration awards into the discussion. He vowed there would be no surrender unless the Caribbean Court of Justice said so.

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“You know, his position is: well, there is a settlement agreement and we will go to the language and we will get the interpretation from the C.C.J. – and he is right; but Christ, man. I sat across the table from this man – I’m not naïve – but I will tell you that when I was insisting that the only way I would settle is if there were an agreement that the accommodation agreement portion of the award would go to the people of this country for the funding of charitable projects. We argued and ultimately I said to him and he agreed, well he doesn’t have any personal financial interest in these shares, these things are owned by charitable concerns, and so, yeah, he can agree to do, subject only to his taking out expenses, which I thought was fair enough. What is happening now, is that, clearly, because, in my view, he has been checkmated, at least temporarily in terms of collecting on the arbitration awards, he is inflating, deliberately, those costs with respect to the Dunkeld expenses to try to get back at the Government; well, we are going to the mattresses. We will go to the C.C.J., I don’t think that the language in the agreement entitles him to say the liabilities are exactly what I claim them to be; no, man. A court will clearly have to determine what is reasonable and what is not reasonable. In the end, if he does succeed in getting more in U.S. dollars that I personally think he is entitled to, it would be a violation certainly of the spirit in which the discussions were held, but if that is what the legal language sustains, then I will have to accept that in that regard I would have been bested.”