One week ago we showed you the secret accommodation agreement signed in September of 2005 between then Prime Minister Said Musa and BTL. It commits to a number of concessions in exchange for BTL buying over Intelco assets, which the same government had gotten Social Security to secretly secure. The agreement and its subsidiaries, a total of 71 pages, refer to a master agreement signed in June of 2005. That’s another agreement the last government committed to which this new administration is legally bound to uphold. But just like the accommodation agreement, government does not have a copy of the June 2005 master agreement. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Dean Barrow told us they’ve looked everywhere.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“That master agreement is one of course that we don’t have. We remember had to quarrel with these people even to get the accommodation agreement. When they first said to us officially, ‘oh we don’t have to pay you business tax because of the commitments in the Accommodation agreement, and we had to say which accommodation agreement. I remember writing them to tell them nobody currently in the Attorney General’s Ministry of Finance or indeed the government of Belize has ever seen a copy of this accommodation agreement and that is how they agreed to send it to me on the condition that I not release it, which was a nonsensical position. It is the same thing with this so called master agreement. The current government, the new administration, has never seen it. It is that Said Musa, Ralph Fonseca, entered into these agreements and kept them hidden even from public officers. Financial Secretary had no sight of the accommodation agreement, had no sight of this master agreement. The legal consultant had no sight of the accommodation agreement and as far as I know had no sight of the master agreement. This is the way Musa and Fonseca and the PUP are operating.”
The accommodation agreement was protected by a secrecy clause but now that those have been outlawed by the amended Freedom of Information Act, they no longer apply. Presumably, the master agreement, which we must assume BTL has a copy of, is also protected by that clause.
