Jaime Briceño confirmed to 7News that the Briceño family has not sold its 22% hold in Speednet.
And while the PM didn't want to talk much about that-he had a lot to say about the High Court decision on Brad's Gaming Co.
The High Court ruled that Brad's Gaming Company and Brad's Gaming Group must pay over $5 million in Business Taxes. When asked whether it was a political directive to go after them, the PM explained that it was BTS that discovered the business tax arrears. Here's how he put it:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"The Belize Tax Service has a responsibility to be able to ensure that we can collect the taxes necessary. What happened in this instance, when we as a Government, we were taking a look at the agreement that was signed, and then we realized that a number of clauses within the agreement were not being met, and we brought it to their attention that they need to comply. They didn't, and I don't really want to go into the details, but we gave them, I think it was 2 years, for them to be able to comply. And in one of them, the Tax Service realized that they were not complying with their taxes, I think it was business tax, and so they, as mandated by law, they did an assessment to Brad's, to the Boledo company. And it has nothing to do that there was any political directive to be able to do that. It's simply because when we were reviewing the clauses of the contract, there were several things that they were not complying, and one of them the Tax Service picked up and said, 'Hold on, I think they're not, there's an issue here with the business tax.'"
