In the past two months, two Cabinet Ministers have made public statements declaring that government guaranteed the Universal Health Services loan from the Belize Bank. And so when that debt ballooned from $16 million to $33 million, government was liable. So, if government had to trade off 9,000 acres of public land on Northern Ambergris Caye to settle the debt then that's just what it had to do, end of story.
But is it really? Last week in the Senate Godwin Hulse showed that there is a DFC guarantee for that debt, not a government guarantee. May sound the same, except that it isn't.
And now the Association of Concerned Belizeans wants to make sure that government doesn't use public assets to settle a debt that it is actually the responsibility of DFC, no matter how insolvent it might be. And they have a startling piece of evidence to show that despite declarations to the contrary, there's no government guarantee.
And they know that because they used the Freedom of Information Act to request it and the Financial Secretary Dr. Carla Barnett said that she knows of no such guarantee. ACB President David Vasquez, and board members Steve Duncan and Glen Ysaguirre explained the significance of this.
David Vasquez, President - ACB
"Ended up with a response written on the 13th of March from the Fin Sec, Dr. Carla Barnett, which unequivocally states that or suggests, and I use the word suggests, that there is no guarantee."
Steve Duncan, ACB
"But I think even stronger than that, beyond suggestion she made it categorically clear that she is not aware of any and that in fact, if I can read from here, 'I am unable to provide a copy of the said guarantee because we do not have a copy of such a guarantee on our files at the Ministry of Finance.' So while there is a suggestion that there is no none, it is very clear that the person in our system, the Financial Secretary who manages the government's debt obligations etc, is not aware that there is a debt, a lingering debt, a contingent debt - anything of the nature out there."
Glen Ysaguirre, ACB
"It really begs the question why would such a statement would have been made publicly that there was a guarantee and this whole deal apparently was predicated on the existence of such a guarantee and that the government was obligated to go in there and bail out the bank because the bank held a sovereign guarantee. Our position is that if such a guarantee now does not exists then now the government does not have obligation to go in there and assume the debt of UHS, the private debt of UHS to a commercial bank."
Steve Duncan,
"The concern to us is whether or not our government, using our taxpayer dollars, should be facilitating that and we are trying to understand where government fits into that sense of urgency, if at all. And if there are no guarantee, we are suggesting that they don't fit into it so stay out of it."
David Vasquez,
"The bottom line is Jules that the process that are going through is not to undermine the government's business. The whole point of the matter is if it is not a process that the government is obligated by any means to service a debt of a private entity, it is not in the interest of the Belizean people for us to be servicing that debt. We can't sit by idly and see this thing push through simply to appease someone, as you said, the main shareholder of Belize Bank. We are here looking after the public interest."
Next, the ACB will file a pre-action letter to the Minister of Finance, Said Musa notifying him that they intend to take their position. They will ask that any activity on behalf of Universal be rescinded.
