BELIZE CITY, Wed. Jan. 26, 2022– Since last Friday, a number of oral and written submissions have been made in the court of Justice Sonya Young as part of the judicial review application brought by UDP Senator Michael Peyrefitte, against Prime Minister John Briceño, to challenge government’s decision to grant a contract to Smart for the provision of Microsoft 365 licenses to various government departments. The claimant, Peyrefitte, is seeking leave for the court to conduct a judicial review of the award, and to hand down a decision to quash the contract due to its illegality and the alleged biases that led to the selection of Smart as the software provider.
The contract, previously held by our national telecom company, Belize Telemedia Limited, is worth 3.37 million dollars and is for the provision of Microsoft 365 licenses for government computers. The claimant, represented by former Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, is asserting that the bidding process that led to the awarding of this contract was flawed, since the bid was not vetted by the Contractor General, and that Smart entered the selective tendering at a late point in the bidding process.
The claimant also highlighted another major point—an appearance of bias on the part of the Prime Minister, Hon. John Briceño, who has publicly said that he owes his brother, Jaime Briceno, an “immense debt” for funding the PUP while they were in opposition for almost 13 years. It is widely known that the Briceño family are part-owners of Speednet’s Smart, and the claimant’s assertions are that Jaime Briceño, the brother of the PM, is at this time the chairman of the company. While the familial connection between Hon. Briceño, who heads the Ministry of Finance through which the contract was granted, and the owners/chairman of the company is not an automatic indication that favoritism influenced the process that led to the awarding of the contact, the claimant is insisting that the process was, in fact, tainted with bias.
The government’s attorney, Trinidadian Queen’s Counsel Douglas Mendez, has conceded that GOB did violate the Finance and Audit Reform Act in not sending the contract to the Contractor General for review and approval prior to the awarding of the contract to Smart. In an interview recently, PM Briceño acknowledged the violation of the Act, but indicated that it was the Financial Secretary, Joseph Waight, who was responsible for any slip-ups in the process. His legal counsel, in submissions to the court, pointed to the Financial Secretary as the final decision-maker and not the Prime Minister. There is an insistence on his part, though, that Smart offered the lowest bid and that it was on this basis that the company was granted the contract.
“Our Government has admitted that they did not go to the Contractor General, so basically all that is going to be is that we’re going to go to the Contractor General for him to take a look at … but in the report that the Contractor General gave he was very clear that all the process was followed, that it was open, that it was transparent and that Speednet did give the best offer to the government,” PM Briceño said in his interview.
The PM said that Fin. Sec. Waight had a sense of urgency in his efforts to renew the contract, since the expiration date for the licenses was approaching. “So, I guess in his haste, and I have not sat down to ask him about it. I guess in his haste he said you know what, Speednet, you won it, please hurry make sure that they don’t cut us off,” Hon. Briceño said. (What is worth, noting, though, is that there were a number of months of service remaining in the contract with Belize Telemedia Limited—service which had reportedly already been paid for, resulting in a duplication of payment by the government when it entered a contract with Smart prior to the expiration of the previous contract with BTL, which had been extended.)
The claimant, Senator Michael Peyrefitte, stated in a media interview last Friday that putting all the blame on the Financial Secretary is intolerable.
“Well, that is unacceptable. The buck stops with the Ministry of Finance and the Minister of Finance, like he used to like to say when he was the Leader of the Opposition. And so, he is responsible for making sure that the contract reached the Contractor General. We are hoping that the judge will quash this contract and send a clear message that the government cannot break the law,” stated Peyrefitte.
He went on to say, “Behind door number one, you have to admit that you broke the law, and you purposely did not send the contract to Contractor General, and a company that is associated with your family got the contract. You have to admit that, one, and so there is a clear bias. If you don’t want to go through that door, the second door is this, you don’t know. So the Minister of Finance is saying that he doesn’t know what’s going on in his ministry? How ih nuh wahn know? Ih have to know.”
Senator Darrell Bradley is representing the National Trade Union Congress of Belize as an interested party and has made submissions in line with that of the claimant’s, local reports say. Justice Sonya Young has reserved her decision until February 18, when she will hand down her ruling on whether or not a case with requisite merit was presented by Peyrefitte. If granted leave for this judicial review, the submitted arguments from the parties will be examined, and judgement will be handed down.