And while the Prime Minister's spirited response to Barrow was the juiciest bit of his little chitchat with his employee Nuri Muhammad, the Prime Minister spent most of the interview discussing the affidavit from Phil Johnson, the President of the Belize Bank.
That affidavit was ventilated in some detail yesterday by Barrow, making the case that government was back on the Bank's hook for $33 million - thanks to a March loan note and settlement deed signed by the Prime Minister without Cabinet approval or fore-knowledge. Previously, the PM had said those documents were not binding, but the Johnson affidavit makes it clear that they are formal, final and in effect.
The Prime Minister today said that things have changed and that's why the bank reacted as it did.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
"The March settlement agreements, if you like, were made in the context of an interim step, as we've been saying, towards finding a full and final settlement of this matter. Clearly at that time the government was thinking of a government takeover, that was the plan, that the government would take over then UHS and the government would of course accept the obligation to pay the liabilities. At that same time of course an agreement was made for a line of credit to deal with the liabilities, the payables of the hospital.
All that has changed to the extent that the loan motion that we took to the National Assembly, as the whole world knows, has been withdrawn. So the government is no longer pursing the government takeover of the UHS. What we are pursuing now is a private sector takeover of the assets and liabilities of UHS.
This thing has been a very tough negotiation between a commercial bank and the government because of the guarantee going back to 2004. We reached a point where the government was able to get the bank to agree to a settlement of $29 million over 25 years. We discussed that, we consulted with the people.
Clearly the people were not happy with that, they don't want taxpayers money to be used at all for this private hospital, even though it is a very high quality tertiary hospital - the people re telling me, telling my government, that they want us to pursue it in this way and they prefer that it is kept as a private hospital and that the private sector pay for it. I have to respect that and indeed I have.
And I want to make it abundantly crystal clear, categorically clear, that that is the road we are pursuing and there is no question of the government assuming this debt and paying it off and taking over this hospital. We have already changed course over the last several days.
Several interested parties have approached me and my government, speaking to different officials. We are actually pursuing at the very moment a memorandum of understanding of one such group. They are very keen and they are involved already with healthcare at a very high level, both in Belize and the United States of America. They have very good connections, they seem to have the financing. We have to be satisfied by that."
For its part, the bank has issued a rare press release saying that Barrow was wrong to have referred to the affidavit as it was only meant to be used in court. The bank accuses Barrow of trying the case in the media. But it's already been put out there and much of it put the PM on the spot. That's why he also had to defend a $12 million loan facility from the Belize Bank to Universal that government was a party to, also without Cabinet's knowledge. That was transacted on March 29th. But today the PM defended his action saying that the money was just to stabilize Universal.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
"Yes there was a settlement agreement. What we are saying now is that the ball game has changed and we have to now sit down with the bank, once we have the private sector group in place to assume the assets and liabilities of UHS. At no time have we denied that we negotiated a facility with the bank and at no time have we denied that the DFC has in fact been paid four million dollars. And why was the DFC paid four million dollars, and why was that settled? In order to clean up the balance sheet, if you like, of the corporation that owns the hospital."
Of course, the $4 million that has been disbursed was to pay the DFC 66% of its loan principal after the Prime Minister instructed the board to write down the debt.
