By Belize Live News Staff: Now that the Speednet deal is dead and buried, the details of how it was pitched are surfacing, and they explain a lot about why it never stood a chance.
According to 7News, when Lord Michael Ashcroft met with the Social Security Board of Directors, one of the biggest players in the whole acquisition presented the sale of Speednet to BTL as if he were doing Belize a favour. Almost charity, as the station’s reporter put it to the PUP chairman, and charity wrapped “within a threat” at that. No openness to negotiation. No interest in an independent valuation. Take the favour, the framing suggested, and be grateful.
7News asked Henry Charles Usher what he made of that, and the chairman delivered the answer half the country was already thinking.
“That gentleman does not get into any business transaction for charity. He gets into business transactions to make a profit. And he does whatever is in his power, in his group’s power, to maximize that profit. So I would not describe any business deal or any transaction that he has ever proposed as charitable.”
Anyone who has followed the decades of history between the Ashcroft business empire and the Belizean state, the BTL nationalization wars, the arbitration bills, the settlements, will understand why the word charity landed the way it did. Belize has paid dearly in the past for deals involving that portfolio, and a sale offered with no negotiation and no independent valuation was asking the country to buy blind.
The country, in the end, declined. Cabinet announced Wednesday it does not support the acquisition, pulling the plug before the unions’ black shirts ever hit the streets, and leaving the favour, such as it was, unclaimed.
Fair is fair: the account of the Social Security Board meeting comes through 7News’ reporting, and Lord Ashcroft has not responded to it in the report. His side of the story may yet come.
But Usher’s line will outlive the deal itself, because it captured something Belizeans have learned the expensive way: when a billionaire offers you a favour, count your fingers after the handshake.
So tell us, Belize: was rejecting the deal the right call, and what should happen with Speednet now? Let us know in the comments.
