The country's most profitable company had another perplexing day as there are now two boards of directors running the company, one resident and the other in exile, so to speak. Today ICC owner Jeffrey Prosser, from his office in the United States, led 5 of his ICC directors and chaired a BTL board meeting via conference call. The only problem is according to the Government of Belize and the corporate management of BTL, he's playing make believe, or as they would say in the streets, he's "imagining." According to the Government of Belize, it controls the majority of the B and C shares, and it names the board. Any other board, is pure pretend.
But, Prosser and his directors are whistling right past the graveyard that government has set for them. They today carried out the meeting as if it was business as usual. According to an ICC release, Prosser reaffirmed control of BTL during the meeting of his board of directors and approved an employee stock ownership plan that would enable employees to own shares of BTL. Smooth talk, but it fell on mostly unhearing ears in Belmopan and this evening Prosser's Washington Attorney Lanny Davis told us that because it fails to recognize this board, government will now face contempt proceedings on Thursday before a Miami Federal Judge.
Davis says this board convened today by the authority of U.S. Federal Judge Ursula Ungaro Benages. Davis added that Government's Chief Executive Officer Gaspar Aguilar and Company Secretary William Black have been relieved of their posts, suspended with pay. According to Davis they were suspended because they refused to change the information on the company website to reflect the names of the ICC directors and not government's directors. Of course, when we checked both men hadn't gone anywhere because, again, the company's managers are responding to the government approved board, which meets next week and upon which CEO Aguilar has been named a director.
It's all very puzzling, but not to ICC attorney Lanny Davis. He's dead serious and today told us that government can stall all it wants, he's confident that in the end it will, it must adhere to the judgement of the Florida Federal Judge. Again, the next hearing in Florida will be on Thursday. In the interim, government will be seeking an interpretation from the Supreme Court of Belize to bolster its position.
