Tonight, the profligate relationship between Glenn Godfrey's business interests and his easy access to public funds seems more obscene than ever as the Opposition has offered proof that government has secured US $50 million of Godfrey's Intelco debts.
The Opposition has obtained a copy of an unsigned letter from Glen Godfrey to ICC's Ronald Saunders, who is Jeff Prosser's pointman on the Intelco buyout. It says, "(Intelco's) assets may be purchased by the...assumption of US $51.4 million in debt." It continues: "at present the government-secured debt is US $49.8 million." That means that government, with your taxpayer dollars undersigned for just about all of Intelco's now imperiled debt and if Intelco or its new buyers won't pay, well government must and it would do so with your money.
It's a chilling but not altogether unexpected revelation of public risk undertaken for private insiders. But today Finance Minister Hon. Ralph Fonseca called our newsroom to say it's just not true. He says government's direct commitment to Intelco is US $10 million to the International Bank of Miami, and US $10 million in Social Security Securitization proceeds amounting to $40 million. Denying flatly what is in the letter, Fonseca stressed that government has not made any guarantees for the US $24 million Godfrey borrowed from the Royal Merchant Bank of Trinidad or any other debt.
So where does the letter come from? Well Fonseca says Godfrey told him that he did not sent it to Jeffrey Prosser's people at ICC but to quote Minister Fonseca, "he (Godfrey) may have had a draft lying around the office." Well the Opposition isn't buying it; the party calls it reckless and corrupt even as government now enshrines a new monopoly.
But all that aside, now that government accepts as fact what would not have been known had we not reported it: first that Social Security has been paying Godfrey's debt since November, and second that Intelco owes Social Security US $10 million. What's next is will Social Security get back that money? Well after so much reckless endangerment of public funds, quite incredibly, Fonseca says the priority now is not to hurt Social Security. He says he is sure that Social Security will recover the $6.2 million Godfrey owes in missed loan payments. But the US $10 million invested in Intelco well that's not so sure...he says government should get back about US $9 million in cash and there are more than sufficient Godfrey assets which can be claimed to recover the remaining million U.S. dollars. What are those assets? Well Fonseca says it includes the entire Data Pro property, which Social Security also funded through mortgage securitization proceeds.
It's certainly is a tangle, and today Fonseca conceded that, "we paid the price for competition."