Former Telemedia Chair says payments aren’t scandalous

The hostile takeover of Telemedia was completed on Tuesday and since then the chairman of the board, Net Vasquez, has been making public allegations about the state of Telemedia before its hasty nationalization. Prime Minister Dean Barrow made the announcement in the House of Representatives on Monday and by Tuesday afternoon, the deal was signed, sealed and delivered. Vasquez has been giving interviews to the effect that Telemedia was looted in its last days as a private entity. News Five sat today on a one on one interview with the former chairman of the executive committee, Dean Boyce, who says not so and that the transactions were all legit.

Dean Boyce, Former Chairman, Executive Committee, B.T.L.
“We’ve had relationships, fairly good relationships, with our suppliers, professional firms, lawyers in particular for many years and, as a result of that, they would tend to give a substantial amount of credit. They will allow for us to pay several months of arrears. When it was clear what was about to take place, some of those firms felt they would be unfairly dealt with once the nationalization process had been completed and therefore they demanded immediate payment of all of their outstanding bills and those payments were made on the Monday and Tuesday before the completion of the nationalization exercise. In addition to that, there’s been a management contract in place for many years—both over the last four years, before the Prosser period and before that for several years. Again that was somewhat in arrears, so again those payments were brought up to date plus the final termination payments. I should point out that this is not an unusual circumstance. When the company was sold to Prosser on first of April 2004, the final payment for a legal advisors at the time were also brought up to date. That included a number of payments to Lois Young Barrow that they were made during that period in March of 2004.”

Marion Ali
“The newspaper made allegations that it was looting, they referred to it as looting.”

Dean Boyce
“No this is just sensationalism. Paying the bills of suppliers is not looting. They were legitimate charges.”