For the past 36 hours - the news cycle has been fuelled by two major events: first, the disclosure that the Briceno phone company, SMART, got paid 3.37 million for a contract BTL used to have; and second, by the news that the Minister of Health signed a special waiver for a big-time wedding to proceed at the Biltmore Best Western.
You've heard the Minister speak on the second subject earlier in the news - but the first still has many layers to peel.
And one was revealed last night in an internal document leaked from inside BTL. It's a communication form the CEO, Ivan Tesecum to his managers - explaining to them how BTL got chanced out of a contract he feels they had already and made the best offer to keep. Jules Vasquez looks at the document:
On July 5th, the BTL CEO writes his senior managers lamenting that the Microsoft 365 license had been awarded to Speednet - the parent company for SMART.
He says the sequence of events, quote, "demonstrate(s) that to accommodate a last minute non a last-minute non-Microsoft Partner the goal post was moved and set up for Digi to not win the renewal."
A damning conclusion and he details the timeline - which shows that Speednet/SMART was introduced as a bidder on June 15th, three days before the June 18th submission deadline.
And that was not the only accommodation - CEO Tesucum notes that the bid was originally for three years - but suddenly a line to say, "quotes for one (1) year will also be considered" was added - also an apparent accommodation to Speednet/SMART.
Tesucum concludes, quote, "Digi provided (the) best pricing at $9.29M" and was the only one to have value added services in training and tech support" like this one we attended in 2018 - which are worth another two hundred thousand dollars.
And as a sweetener, Digi then offered to offset 50% or over $1.5 million of the licenses renewal cost against dividends it owes to The Government of Belize.
But GOB didn't want to hear it, SMART was awarded the contract - and on August 10th paid Speednet - via cheque - 3.73 million dollars.
Tesecum in his role as CEO paints a most unflattering picture of GOB's business ethics and the circumstances certainly suggest questionable practices in awarding the contract - telling his manager, basically, that his company was robbed!. But, to hear his Chairman tell it - BTL just didn't do well enough:
Mark Lizarraga - Chairman, BTL
"I know of one instance of, I think it was the software licenses that went out to contract. There was a bid that was put out which we lost. The other company, unfortunately, came in cheaper than us. We had margins of about 10% and the other company, we are told, won the contract because they bid less than us."
