Attorneys for Michael Ashcroft and Jeffrey Prosser appeared before the Chief Justice in his chambers today. With Lois Young-Barrow on Ashcroft's side and Michael Young on Prosser's, they argued over whether or not the court should follow the urging of Ashcroft along with the PSU and BNTU, who control 10% of BTL, and appoint an investigator to look into the affairs of BTL. In the end Chief Justice Conteh decided that he would have a hearing on February 4th to make that decision. In the meantime, the Chief Justice warned that if BTL issued any new shares which would dislodge Ashcroft and the union from its 10% position, the company would be held in contempt of court.
And while that was the court business, perhaps the most interesting development of the day came through Jeff Prosser's affidavit which disclosed that, in a board meeting this morning, BTL's board had reversed its decision to issue 24 million new shares for $24 million. Instead, BTL's parent company, the Prosser owned Belize Telecom Limited would be issuing a loan note to your phone company for the same amount. With that money BTL will turn around and buy Intelco's assets from, again, Prosser's Belize Telecom.
BTL has to buy it from Prosser and not directly from Intelco because that's the way Prosser set up the deal, negotiating independently with the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago to take over Intelco's loan for the price of US$26.2 million and then sell it to BTL. In exchange, Prosser has given RBTT government's Carlisle Shares which despite not paying for it he apparently handles freely as a security. Of course, government lets Prosser do pretty much as he wishes with those shares because with the certificates for the Carlisle shares now locked in their vault, government hopes that RBTT will come to Prosser and the government's rescue and produce the US$57 million to pay for the Carlisle shares. RBTT has to do this be February 7th or the government will cancel the deal.
And while the Prime Minister has stated in the National Assembly that when Prosser takes over Intelco's debt it will provide an ease to Social Security which has guaranteed $30 million of Intelco's debt, that is hardly the case. As we understand it, Intelco's major debt to Social Security comes in the form of $20 million in fake St. James mortgages that SSB securitized. A BTL release today stated that Belize Telecom has agreed to make payment arrangements with the Social Security Board for this. No timeframe was disclosed.
