It’s official: Musa does BTL deal with Ashcroft

We thought the story couldn’t get any more complicated but the plot surrounding control of Belize Telecommunications Limited is as thick as a three day old pot of split pea soup. If you watched the last seven minutes of video you now know that the Prime Minister has confirmed what we reported on yesterday’s newscast: the government of Belize has cut a deal with Michael Ashcroft in which the Anglo-Belizean businessman buys fifteen percent of BTL. The shares, a mixture of “B” and “C” denominations, come out the fifty-two percent of the company that GOB repossessed from Jeffrey Prosser for non-payment. Price: fourteen point five million U.S. dollars…and this time we have confirmed that the money was actually paid…no notes, no loans no bull. In addition to the shares, Ashcroft also got a commitment from government. Here it is once more.

Prime Minister Said Musa
?In creating this new opportunity we have had to make a difficult decision. That decision was to sign a Settlement Deed under which we agreed to abandon any litigation against the Carlisle Group for the recovery of outstanding business taxes in exchange for the Carlisle Group abandoning its litigation pending in both Belize and the United Kingdom for the right to buy back BTL and undertaking to limit itself to a 25% shareholding in BTL.?

About that commitment to stay at twenty-five percent. Although we have not seen the document, we are led to believe that while it is Ashcroft’s present intention to limit his shareholdings–in order to give BTL management and staff a chance to put their deal together–it does not mean that he is limited to twenty-five percent forever. We also are informed that although Prime Minister Musa refers to Ecom as part of the Carlisle Group, Ecom is in fact controlled by Michael Ashcroft as an individual, not by Carlise, which is a publicly traded company.