Belmopan fails to answer allegations of oil scandal

Accusations against the Belize government that it gave extraordinarily generous terms to a group of local businessmen in an oil concession have yet to be answered by Belmopan. Our canvassing of Cabinet members reveals that the members have spent the last three days reviewing their minutes of the June fifth meeting, presumably to refresh their memories of what they approved prior to tomorrow’s meeting in Belmopan. When asked for some type of explanation for Cabinet’s actions, Cabinet Secretary Bobby Leslie today sent us part of a report that states “I have no record of discussions in Cabinet to modify or give any special consideration to ZMT or BCH, except that Cabinet insisted that ten percent of the shares in the companies should be made available to the general public.” On July twenty-fourth the Government of Belize signed production sharing agreements with two local applicants—ZMT International and BCH International—and offered them a deal on that was extraordinarily more favourable than those granted to other recent applicants. The P.S.A.s have sparked controversy as the contracts mean that if oil is discovered in the relevant blocks, the treasury would be shorted of tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Further complicating the story is that former Minister of Natural Resources Johnny Briceno has maintained to the media that before his resignation from the Cabinet, the proposals he submitted for approval were far more favourable to government than those signed a month later.