Yesterday when we checked it wasn't there, but today BTL's new amended Articles of Association were in the file at the companies register in Belmopan. Utilities Minister Ralph Fonseca told us and showed the proof of a receipt that he did file it on Monday and surmised that there must have been some kind of mistake, to make it absent from the file when we checked yesterday.
The Articles show that by force of statute Minister Fonseca has amended 13 articles of this private sector company. All those articles have references to the Special Share that Jeffrey Prosser refused to return to the Government of Belize. And while removing Prosser's rights is one thing, removing those of small Belizean shareholders, about one thousand of them, is quite another.
But that's just what Minister Fonseca did when he amended Article 127, which protects the small shareholders' entitlement to a dividend. That Article 127 ensures that 45% of BTL's profits are paid out in dividends. It does that by declaring that the dividend will be paid unless there is an agreement to do otherwise by the holder of the B Shares and the holder of Special Share, which should be government.
Well now, it only says that the holder of the majority B Shares alone can decide otherwise and that holder is...you guessed it, Michael Ashcroft and his affiliated companies. So now, Ashcroft and his company directors exclusively will decide if that dividend of 45% of profits is or is not paid. It's an important point to those one thousand shareholders who invested based on the assurance in the company's articles. But now that their rights have been varied in the Minister's new amended Articles of Association when it comes to dividends what the Lord Ashcroft says, goes.
