D.F.C. Executive: Never knew of changes in loan purpose

Next to testify was Roberto Bautista, an employee of the D.F.C. for more than twenty-five years, having served as a director, the chief operations officer, and as the secretary of the Belize Mortgage Company, the Cayman Islands entity created as the “special vehicle” to allow for the North American securitisation programme. In his testimony, Bautista agreed with his C.E.O. that with regard to the securitisation package for the loans to Western Caribbean and Intelco–two Glenn Godfrey companies–D.F.C. was never informed of any change in the projects; that the money would now be used for a high risk telecommunications venture instead of the construction of apartments.

Godwin Hulse
?You saw the file and in reviewing this file, with the subsequent information you now have that in fact there is just plain nothing out there, would you conclude or could you conclude that somewhere in this there must have been some misrepresentation??

Roberto Bautista, Chief Operations Officer, D.F.C.
?Well I not too sure you know, because as you said, this thing shows that it should have been completed. The insurance shows that it?s there and if later on we find out that it?s not there, then I don?t know. What I heard was that there was some change in the project, which I just heard recently. We were never informed of that change. It was mentioned that there was some change, but we don?t know anything about that change of project. From that information and from the files I?ve said, I conclude that the project was completed. Initially, when the information was given, it shows there that it wasn?t completed, because some the tapes showed that it was not totally disbursed. But before the consummation of this transaction it showed there that there was no need to put money in the quick fund account because it had been used.?

Godwin Hulse
?At the end of the day to put it simply, the public would be asked to pay for loans that private individuals enjoyed. If there was not sufficient collateral to recover those loans in the event of a default, do you feel that the D.F.C. had a greater responsibility to ensure that before it advised the government to guarantee this package, that everything was intact??

Roberto Bautista
?Well we did what we could have done best. We worked hard on this transaction, we had some technical people that worked day and night checking all those files, reviewing everything, and as far as we said, we thought that everything was a hundred percent correct.?