Prosser’s lawyer asks Belizeans for patience
It was to have been Innovative Communications CEO Jeffrey Prosser facing off with the Belizean press corpstoday, but this afternoon we were informed that “scheduling conflicts” would prevent the BTL boss from the sit down. In his place appeared the company’s Washington lawyer Lanny J. Davis. Davis’s claim to fame is a two-year stint with the Clinton administration during the Monica Lewinsky days, but the flak he faced from morally offended Republicans was kid’s stuff compared to the ire of Belizean taxpayers who fear being left holding the financial bag for Prosser’s failed payments. Davis is in Belize to deflect the mounting wave of criticism launched against his boss in the wake of ICC’s default on loan payments to the International Bank of Miami–loans contracted by the Government of Belize.
Prosser and ICC had previously promised the Government to repay IBoM some fifty-seven million U.S. dollars, which GOB had borrowed to buy the BTL shares from Michael Ashcroft’s Carlisle Group. But News 5 has been made to understand that one of the conditions of that sale to the Government of Belize was that ICC actually pay for the shares. During Friday’s house meeting, Prime Minister Said Musa admitted that his administration accepted promissory notes, not cash, for the Carlisle shares. It’s a situation, which our sources say might give Carlisle the legal grounds to upset the deal between GOB and ICC. In a throwback to his Clinton days, Davis says, well, it all depends on how you define “cash”.
Lanny Davis, ICC Attorney
?I do know that a promissory note that is ultimately paid in cash is the same and we have every confidence that the total of eighty-nine million dollars that was the purchase price for the system that Mr. Prosser agreed to in the form of two promissory notes will in fact be paid. And again, what I haven?t heard mentioned is that already twenty-eight point five million dollars in cash has been paid of that eighty-nine million dollars and the additional fifty-nine million dollars is in the process of a financing being completed and we have every confidence that this will be an academic distinction between a promissory note and a note that?s been paid in the not too distinct future.?
?Had we not done anything from day one, I could understand why pessimists would say maybe we are not going to be able to complete the financing. Now some pessimists are motivated by politics; some pessimists are motivated by facts. In this case, optimists have the better case than the pessimists because optimists would point to what Mr. Prosser has already done without there being a closing. Twenty-eight million dollars in cash assuming the nine million dollar debt to the Social Security Board from Intelco, paying operating expenses of Intelco and most importantly, the hardware, infrastructure, improvements and service already seen by people in Belize.?
Citing BTL’s solid performance, expansion and new investment under ICC control, as well as picking up the tab for Belmopan’s and Intelco’s debt servicing, Davis makes the case that his optimism has the weight of credibility.
Lanny Davis
?The facts are that we committed to pay the Government of Belize eighty-nine million dollars when it chose to purchase the prior owner?s shares for fifty-nine million dollars and sell its own shares to Mr. Prosser for a total of eighty-nine millions dollars. When the financing is completed, the Government of Belize will receive eighty-nine million dollars. There will be no need for a guarantee for any additional debt. The Government of Belize will receive cash of eighty-nine million dollars. We have already paid the Government of Belize twenty-eight point five million dollars and the rest as I said we are optimistic will take place.?
?On the Intelco debt, there is a nine or ten million dollar obligation of Intelco to the Social Security Board. ICC and Mr. Prosser have been willing to assume that obligation as part of their acquisition of Intelco. I believe in that case the Government of Belize will be involved in some kind of a guarantee when it comes to Intelco?s already existing debt to Social Security Board. I am not well informed about Intelco?s piece of this other than to say to you that major transaction of Mr. Prosser buying BTL does not involve the Government guaranteeing anything indeed it involves the Government being taken out of a loan that it owes to bondholders based on its fifty-nine million dollar debt to bondholders, which Mr. Prosser as I said has been paying interest on even before closing.?
?The most important message and the reason that I came here as Mr. Prosser?s attorney is to ask the people of Belize to be patient and to look at actions and money spent as opposed to political rhetoric. And the facts that I?ve articulated today are un-denied and undisputed. The only question is whether one is optimistic or pessimistic.?
At this point, without an acceptable plan B, both optimists and pessimists might do well to consider the words of former U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt who, when confronted with complaints about a federal judge he had appointed, remarked: “Sure, he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.
