"Good and sufficient cause," according to the Executive Committee which runs BTL, that's what the company's most senior manager Gaspar Aguilar was fired for yesterday. Today we called Chairman Keith Arnold, who would not elaborate on what "good and sufficient cause" means, he would only say that Aguilar knows why he was terminated and added that it is a private matter.

That's all good and well, but there can only be so many private matters in a publicly held company whose board has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. When asked to comment on the rumors that the Executive Committee was investigating a case of poor judgement in handling the company's money, Arnold would only say that we would have to look at the company's financials. By law, those financials must be issued by the end of business on Friday, 21 days before the annual general meeting which is scheduled for the end of the month. We tried to contact Aguilar for comment but he did not return our calls.

7NEWS has received credible but unofficial reports which say that the Executive Committee has launched an internal probe into at least $6 million of BTL's money which was placed for conversion to U.S. dollars on the parallel market. According to our sources, that money was not converted and has not been recovered.

It's a massive figure and a widening problem because the transaction was authorized when ICC controlled the company. Now as very disgruntled minority shareholders, it would seem that ICC would be only too willing to disclose its side of that story, likely to the discredit of the government with whom it continues to be locked in battles on multiple fronts. The other issue is that the use of the informal currency market though illegal and bearing its own risks, may have been a standing practice of management for some years.