U.D.P. Questions Legal Fees For Blue Bond Approved in House

Michael Peyrefitte

U.D.P. Chairman Michael Peyrefitte says he is not satisfied with the response given to him by the Prime Minister on the question of the fifteen million dollars approved by Parliament for legal and advisory fees attached to the Blue Bond. In December of 2021, Peyrefitte wrote to the Prime Minister under the Freedom of Information Act requesting a breakdown of how the fifteen million dollars was spent.  At Tuesday’s U.D.P. press conference, Peyrefitte said in his experience these fees are tied into the negotiations and should have been settled when the deal was cut. 

Michael Peyrefitte, Chairman, U.D.P.

“With this letter, he has put himself in even more trouble. Sometimes it is best you don’t say anything, or just answer the question. Superbond negotiations, when this government first came to power, for the March 2021/2022 budget, they allocated twelve million Belize dollars that was to be used as transaction cost for the new “red bond”, transaction cost they budgeted for. When the deal was concluded, normally what happens, and the Prime Minster told me this in his letter, “I know this very well, and I know that very well”. Well, let me tell you what I know very well. When you close the deal, what happens is the bond holders, or the people you owe, will lend you or provide for you extra money so that you can pay closing cost. So, that twelve million they budgeted for in March was not enough. So, when you close the deal, you say listen, I had budgeted twelve million, but it is not enough, so please add something on to what we owe you, provide that to us so that we can pay our lawyers and the advisors and the like. That amount was twenty million dollars Belize. So, when the transaction closed, we told the bondholder, the TNC people who issued the Blue Bond, we need twenty million dollars more to close up the cost of the restructuring. So, at that point, you tell them what you have left, and that is the amount that they would give you. So TNC, in addition to taking the place of the other creditors, they provided and additional twenty million dollars on top of the restructuring so that we could pay lawyers and people like that to close the cost.”