Intelco is not broke.
That's what a release from the company said today as it refuted the headline story in today's guardian. Apart from claiming 30% of the telecommunications market and a sound future, the release repeats what Finance Minister Hon. Ralph Fonseca told us last night that government has paid the last two installments of Intelco's loan at the International Bank of Miami as payment for equipment leased from Intelco. The Intelco release calls this a "routine and uncontroversial business transaction."
We'll add, that's a stretch: we've never heard of a routine transaction where government pays a suppliers banker in U.S currency at no commission. That's right, under this quite unusual arrangement government is paying for local telephone services in US dollars - using up its own scarce hard currency resources and sparing Intelco the considerable hard time and headache of having to scramble to find US dollars to pay its creditors.
But that's only one wrinkle in a Government managed telecommunication industry, which has quickly taken on a wholly mysterious character. And part of that mystery has become the matter of the US 30 million that BTL's new owner Jeffrey Prosser is supposed to pay government to buy over Social Security's 26% holding in BTL.
7NEWS has received reliable reports that Prosser has not paid GOB this money yet. When will it be paid? Well, according to senior sources in the banking sector best indications are that the money may not become available until possibly as late as August, which means that for the time being at least government is actually financing Prosser's buy over of its assets. However despite this, we understand that Prosser has taken control of the share certificates of government and Social Security, thus controlling 84% holdings in BTL.
We were unable to reach the Minister of Finance for comment on this today, but ICC's Vice President of Public Relations Rene Henry told us that to his knowledge the report is inaccurate; he says all the funds have been transferred. Still, we do know that those we spoke to in the commercial banking sector this week say that the expected infusion of foreign exchange that should have accompanied the sale has not yet come through.