And in other news, senator Michael Peyrefitte has written to the Prime Minister And Minister Of Finance under the Freedom of Information act to request the details concerning the $15,000,000 spent in legal fees for the Blue Bond. According to Peyrefitte, he's curious as to why they needed so much money when the UDP reportedly did most of the work to get the blue bond rolling. He believes that the PUP - who advocated for more transparency within the government - should reveal the names of those legal advisors who received this money as soon as possible.
Michael Peyrefitte - Senator
"When we saw in the supplementary appropriation bill, 2021/2022, which is the first one for the PUP this year, they indicated that they want to ask the people of Belize to pay $15,000,000 related to the Blue Bond issue for legal fees and advisory fees. I believe the party leader, Honorable Patrick Faber, had asked the Prime Minister in the House for some details, he gave very unsatisfactory details, I asked for details in the Senate and got no response basically at all on what those fees and the Belizean people keep asking us as an opposition party, who received that $15,000,000 so we want to know who received that $15,000,000 and how much each of them received. Their platform before they got into government was transparency and ease of information and when I was a part of the previous government, I used to always tell the members on the other side, if you want something, request it in writing under the Freedom of Information Act so I am doing what I said they should have done so all I'm asking for is this, please provide us with the information, if you have nothing to hide then the information should now be a problem for you to provide and we want the documentation, we just don't want a response in writing as to who got what, we want to see the receipts, we want to see the documents where these people were paid and who were paid how much and I don't think that that should be a difficult thing for the government to provide. I'm not trying to imply that any untoward business took place, I'm not trying to say that people who received shouldn't have received money, I'm not saying that at all, I'm asking this rather, how much did these people get paid and who got paid, that's all we're asking and then the Belizean public can make their own judgement from that. All I can say is in my opinion 15 million seems a lot and I want to know who got paid what, especially since 95% of that was done by the time they got into government, the heavy lifting for that restructuring with the blue bond took place under the UDP, they came and they just had to bring it home with about 2 or 3% of the effort, so what has taken place between November 2020 and October 2021 that justifies the payment of 15 million dollars."
