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Right now, the Barrow administration is embroiled in multimillion dollar litigation with the Ashcroft group of companies where there is no foreseeable end in the near future. But, how did it happen that the Ashcroft Alliance to have ended up with controlling interest in the telecommunications company BTL? Well, former Prime Minister Briceno has an interesting take on it which he revealed to his PUP colleague who recorded him secretly. Here's how he described the moment when BTL ended up in the hands of the Ashcroft Alliance:

Hon. John Briceno
"Now they had 90 days to find a buyer, and they can't find a buyer, they can't find a buyer and they brought this other American - Prosser, Jeffrey Prosser that he came and paid them. He did not pay them one cent. He gave them an IOU. Ashcroft asked them "did he pay you?" and Said said yes he paid when he knew fully well that he did not pay. He gave them and IOU. Jeffrey Prosser came in and all the profits that BTL was making he was taking it away, he was taking it. I think like two years later they realized that Jeffrey Prosser does not have any money and was going into bankruptcy in other parts of the United States and the Caribbean. What happened is that we signed for 10…15 million US dollars at the Miami International Bank…IBM International Bank of…15 million US and we are paying interest, we are paying interest…they already rolled it over one year because it was a one year loan so in the second year what did we have to do? We had to take away but we didn't have the money to pay for it. So what did we do? Whom we went to? Michael said "you want me to buy it?" "I am not paying you the 110 dollars that you paid me; I will pay you 80 dollars" so Michael won when he lost it and won when he bought it. Why? Because Said and Ralph and Glen Godfrey were… then on top of that now when Said tells Michael "well if you buy that, I want you to buy the tower…the Intelco infrastructure because Intelco owes Social Security 20 million dollars…22 million dollars. Michael says "OK I'm going to take it but I want you to guarantee me a 15 percent return on my investment and if I don't make that 15 percent return on my investment I'm going to deduct it from my taxes until I get back my 20 million I'm paying for you."... And that's why we are like this…and them the IMF was on us, telling us that we are spending money that we don't have. So we couldn't tell you we didn't talk to Said. We talked to him and we talked to him until finally I tell you we come as a group and told him if you don't fire him we will step down…and that's how they removed him from ministry of finance. And when Dave saw this he said this is my chance…he pledged allegiance with them. I never asked Dave to support us. The only one I asked was Servulo because he was a member of cabinet. And then Dave took that and started hammering and hammering and hammering me."

"In 2006 when when Dave realized that he…when Marco Tulio came to see me I told him that he would be a good person and we supported him for the Town Council he lost and he said "I will continue I think I will challenge Dave" I said I think we should. Maybe he felt that he would lose and decided not to run."

Notably, Ashcroft has granted an interview to Channel 5 in which he categorically denies that he has any business interests in BTL. He claims that the former owners, which are not connected to him, are charitable trusts.