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This is White Devil. Please do enjoy.

There's this thing people say in Belize.

Belize is not a real place. Belize is not a real place.

Belize is not a real place. We heard this over and over as if it was some tourist slogan, which it definitely is not. Here's what people mean when they say it.

It describes a situation where it's so shocking. It's unnecessarily foolish. Let's say a police officer shoots down a killer teenager, and he is not immediately charged a manslature, a murder, or gets away or gets bail. The reaction of the public would have been, Belize is not a real place. It's just so jaw-dropping situation that you just can't believe that's happening here in our little Belize.

It means that things in Belize often don't play out as you would expect them to. Institutions and officials make decisions that seem illogical or even sometimes illegal. Power isn't questioned. It's just the way things are. Belize is not a real place is a way to articulate the hidden and powerful forces that permeate everything.

Corruption in Belize is invisible, but you feel it and you live it, it accumulates. It's all these little things that seemingly are not connected, but collectively put together, creates an ethos of corruption. And the people in power know it, and they know how to use it. So it's more or less like the West in the cowboy era where it's the Wild Wild West, so outlandish things happen.

There's so much corruption here, and especially in the police force, and it goes all the way to the top.

It does exist in At every level, at some level.

Hippolito, who's out there on the ground reporting the news daily, he knows this as well as anyone.

There's ongoing police brutality, ongoing police victimization, harassment, extortion. The bad apples in a bunch make the entire police Department just totally look corrupt.

Police corruption is often the most visible thing. Cops taking bribes, abusing power, treating rich people differently than poor people. That's all really easy to see. But as you move up through the courts and the politics and powerful business interests, banks, government departments, public works, corruption becomes more abstract, hard to parse. But not so hard that the US State Department missed it. A 2023 summary on human rights practices, which was just released, put it this way, Officials often engage in corrupt practices with impunity. Allegations of corruption in government among public officials, including ministers, deputy ministers, and chief executive officers were numerous. Julia Lopes is a Guatemala journalist with Belizean roots. She's both lived through the corruption and studied its mechanics.

It's just where it spread. It's like the state and the state agencies at the service of whoever can pay for this or that. They do stuff for anybody, whether it's traffickers or it's contraband from a little village like Quicuquer to all the way to the top. In other words, if you have the money to pay for it, you can make it happen.

It's really that simple.

I mean, you see the expats living in these very nice places, and there's two kinds of justice there for the people, for the haves and the have-nots.

That's one of the most fascinating parts of our story. Jasmine Harton was one of the haves, and overnight, she You became a have not.

I think people are starting to see that I'm not getting special treatment because when this all first started to happen, everyone thought, Oh, well, she's rich.

She's this. They didn't realize that I was booted out with absolutely nothing.

Like, literally every cent that I had to my name was gone.

From Campside Media, this is White Devil. And I'm Josh Dean. Episode 3, Belize is not a real place. Disclaimer, Belize is a real place, one with a proud history in a unique, remarkably diverse populace, especially when you consider how tiny it is. In this episode, we're providing some critical background for understanding Belize and its history, in particular as it pertains to the rich and powerful. Corruption and influence are simply facts of life in Belize. In a pressive context, everyone is operating in, from postmen to police officers to prime ministers. This also means that Belize's legal system lacks transparency, accountability, and equal access to justice. That's all important context for the story we're telling. But this background should not be taken as an accusation against any particular individual.

Ms. Raskoff, we've heard so many rumors. We've heard you're a Belizean, you're born in Belize, you lived in Belize. Tell us something about your childhood. I came here in 1953 and attended St. Catherine's School. My father was in the Audit Department here in Belize and left in 1956. Over the years, thought a considerable amount about Belize.

The story of Jasmine Harton and Henry Jamot, of this tragic event in a country that rarely makes our news, I'm sure that story fades quickly if Jasmine is almost anyone else. The only reason you're still hearing about it, the same reason I'm telling it, is because of its connection to the voice you just heard, Michael Ashcroft. So who is he? The Basics. Michael Ashcroft is 78 years old as of this moment. His birthday is in March. The son of civil servants, Ashcroft made his fortune as an entrepreneur, starting with the purchase of a struggling cleaning company for a single pound in 1974. Three years later, he sold the company for £1.3 million. In his career as a buyer and seller of companies was often running. Ashcroft is a caricature of the posh British businessman. Stiff, fussy, dull. The last guy you want to get stuck next to at a cocktail party. But Michael Ashcroft isn't just some fussy Brit with a billion dollars and a stiff upper lip. He also holds a Belizeian passport. And his love affair with the country goes back to his childhood. Here's how he recalled it in his autobiography Dirty Politics Dirty Times, as read by an actor.

To a seven-year-old boy, the The scenery of this small but beautiful land held less of a fascination than those exotic creatures lurking in the jungle or swimming in the Caribbean. This was just about as different from my birthplace of Chichester, West Sussex, as anything I could have imagined. Those were carefree days, and I recall them fondly. Much of my personality was formed in these early years, making me cosmopolitan, proud of my essentially British roots, and possessed of a passion for Belize that has never faltered.

Well, it did falter for a few decades. But in the late '80s, as he tells it, his passion was rekindled by finding an old yearbook with his Belizeian primary schoolmates, many of whom, it would turn out, were now in positions of power and authority. Soon, he was buzzing back and forth between the UK and his old home.

The government had asked me to become the Trade and Investment Advisor to the High Commission in Belize. And on one of my trips, the consortium who were attempting to buy the Royal Bank of Canada had a discussion with me, asked if I were able to help or participate. I was delighted to spearhead the first Belizeian bank. It was hard negotiations, but we brought the bank home, and it's developing and prospering very well.

The journalist who conducted this interview way back in 1987, seemed pretty suspicious about the motives of this white British man who had recently returned and bought the troubled Royal Bank of Canada for a single dollar and renamed it Belize Bank. That bank, the first one wholly owned in Belize, became quite successful and helped Belize become an offshore banking center, going hand in hand with some very care-free regulations. In the 10 years between 1991 and 2001, the number of offshore companies registered in Belize jumped from fewer than 4,000 to more than 20,000. Over the decade that followed that bank takeover, Michael Atchcroft built an empire in his adopted home, with investments in telecoms, hotels, real estate, even fruit-growing, under the blanket of a single company, Belize Holdings Incorporated, or PHI. Phi was given a 30-year exemption from taxes, and was one of only two companies able to retain this status when the Offshore Banking Act and Money Laundering Prevention Act were passed back in 1996. None of this was lost on local journalists.

Okay, why is Michael Ascroff so interested in investing in little beliefs.

If by my participation as an international businessman, it can encourage others to look at and invest and develop with beliefs, then I'd be very pleased indeed.

I had never heard this peculiar man, Michael Ashcroft, before I read the story about the shooting of Henry Jamot by a Canadian woman who turned out to be the mother of Ashcroft's grandchildren. But his name, his specter, the idea of him, that honestly was the thread I was tempted to pull on. His wealth has enabled him to take over entire sectors and wield the influence private individuals just don't have anymore over sovereign nations. As the UK's Guardian newspaper wrote back in 2009, Open a bank account in Belize, buy a home, use an ATM machine, pick up a telephone, browse the internet or watch television, and there's more than a fair chance you will be a customer of a company that is or has been owned by Ashcroft. There was a time when this wasn't so unusual. In centuries past, fantastically rich individuals and families or their proxy corporations did control entire countries. You know the term Banana Republic? O'henri coined it in a 1904 novel to describe Honduras, which was then controlled for all intents and purposes by the United Fruit group company. You know what Belize was called before Independence? British Honduras. This can only happen today in places that can hide in the shadows of the global economy.

And Belize, a British colony until 1981, is just that enigma. It's tiny. Remember, just 400,000 people. And with its white, sandy beaches and delicious jerk chicken, not to mention its status as the only nation in Central America where English is the official language, Which Belize feels like a Caribbean Island that got lost at sea and then shipwrecked into the Central American Coast. Which is maybe apt because the first settlers in Belize were pirates who used its many small islands and jungly shores to hide their plundered goods. Since then, its location and circumstance have always invited entrepreneurs, let's say, opportunists. Today, Belize's lax borders, its whirlwind of tourists, plus its proximity to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, all make it an ideal transit point for the narc trade. It's a convenient hub for drugs making their way from South America toward end users in the US and Europe. So many drugs at one point, that during a visit to the Port by US Customs agents, sniffer dogs trained to seek out cocaine were, quote, so overwhelmed by the smell of drugs that they suffered sensory overload and were unable to function.

In my opinion, geography matters enormously because although Belize is seen as part of Central America, in many respects, it's quite an isolated outpost, small country, small economy.

John Christensen is from Jersey, a tiny island in the English channel. It's a self-governing dependency of the UK, which means it makes its own laws. The island is famous for having a type of cow and a potato named after it. But beyond this, it's perhaps best known as a tax haven. John worked as an economist, advising the government there before switching sides, leaving the island and founding the Tax Justice Belize Network. Jersey is a tiny, windy, rocky place that in many ways resembles an upper middle class suburban market town in England. It's ostensibly nothing like Belize. And yet?

Small island communities and small communities generally are particularly prone to power imbalances. So you have powerful elites, local elites, and people who've moved in.

Out of the way places with obscure histories and legislation are the perfect breeding ground for a particular type of corruption. That's precisely the situation in Belize.

There's no question. It is a tax haven, but there is much more to it. But the sense of being a tax haven has, I think, shaped its domestic politics to quite a large degree, because tax havens tend to operate somewhat secretively.

Tax havens value client confidentiality, and don't ask questions about thorny matters, like the source of assets that are deposited. They can allow corporations institutions and trusts to be registered without requiring the owners or their investors to be publicly known. This is how you get so-called holding companies that may as well be owned by ghosts, which is very handy for unsavory groups like terrorists, arms dealers, and cartel bosses who want to keep their money and their deals well out of the public eye. Belize, like Jersey, offers many of these benefits, such as a shipping register that allows commercial vessels with controversial missions like mega fishing trawlers that ravage undersea ecosystems to sail the seas under the Belizean flag. I'll let you guess which prominent foreign investor once had a major stake in the company that co-owned both the shipping register and the corporate register. There are even passports for sale. I was told by a local investigative reporter that 1 million Belizean passports are held by people who may have never set foot in the country. He called them economic tourists. John Christensen has spent his life fighting to make countries more transparent about how money flows through them.

He's one of the world's foremost experts on tax havens, which he and many others see as incredibly dangerous to global equality, stability, and security. John isn't an expert on bullies, but the country has come up in his work often, and he's made his name understanding places like Bullies, where wealthy individuals and companies often make use of loopholes and shell corporations to keep things opaque.

At a political level, at every level, they like to fly below the radar and not attract too much attention.

And let's be honest, it's not that different in the US or the UK either. The line between creative accounting and quasi legal can get blurry real quick.

I call it the golden rule. Those who have the gold make the rules. You have powerful people, players with local knowledge, but very often players with local knowledge who come from outside, and they use their connections and they use their wealth to shape shape not just the laws, but also the regulations and the compliance procedures very much to their own interests. Personal connections become absolutely core to the way that politics operates, sometimes on the darker side through hidden webs and networks of boy networks or maybe Masonic links or whatever, but also your ability to connect and maintain connections with the people who actually hold power. And that is key. I've come to a rather pessimistic conclusion about places like Belize because I think that they are so vulnerable to being to the concentrated powers of the players of this world.

After the break, we'll explore exactly how much weight his lordship has to throw around in his adopted country. Thank you for listening to White Devil, a podcast about power and privilege in a fragile paradise. You can hear new episodes released weekly on Amazon Music.

You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media.

If you or I went to Belize and killed a police officer, accidentally or not, we'd face a slow byzantine legal system, to be sure. But Jasmine's situation, as we've mentioned, became exponentially more complicated as a result of her family, for lack of a better our word, the Ashcrofts. Because this much is clear, you just can't talk about power in Belize without talking about Lord Michael Ashcroft. He ranks only 136 on the Sunday Times list of Riches Britons. In fact, he fell four spots this year, which is probably the thing that bums the Lord out. But in Belizeian terms, his wealth towers over almost everyone else, which gives him a certain amount of leverage. Here's how one of Belize's former Prime Minister, Dr. Manuel Escavel, explained it to the UK's Mirror newspaper back in 2008. Everything he does- Everything he does operates out of the Belize Bank. After he bought it, many new laws were passed, which everybody widely believes, and I don't think he would deny, were basically written by his lawyers. Everything just escalated to where he became the boss. He, at all times, always says all he wants is a level playing field.

He just wants to be treated fairly. Being treated fairly means you give him what he wants.

You give him what he wants.

Escavel was many years out of power at the time. Traditionally, it's been rare that someone so near the top dares to bite this particular hand when in office. But occasionally, it does happen.

This is our host.

This is our country. This is Dean Barrow, speaking in 2009. Barrow was then Prime Minister, addressing Parliament.

Here we are masters. Here we are sovereign. And there will be no more suffering of this one man's campaign to subjugate an entire nation to his will.

That one man he's talking about, Michael Ashcroft. Barrow met Ashcroft in the '80s, shortly after Ashcroft arrived back in Belize. Barrow was a young and powerful player in the United Democratic Party, the UDP, which was the party in power. Ashcroft chose to support the rival PUP, the People's United Party, which was out of favor. It's a trick he's used to great success in business, value. Buy low when an important asset is undervalued. Eventually, the PUP rose to power, and Ashcroft found himself in a position of even greater influence. Not just a very rich man with cash to invest, a very rich man with cash to invest and close friends who controlled the government. Then, because politics are cyclical, the PUP fell back out as the UDP ascended and elected Dean Barrow to lead. Here's how Barrow looked at him then. I'm reading this verbatim. This sense of Lord Ashcrofts that he can pretty much call all the shots and that national governments must simply allow him to have his way, that's colonialism. I first met him in the '80s when he said he was interested in helping Belize. We actually, silly us, thought he was talking about being philanthropic more than anything else.

But he was certainly not a night in shining armor.

Even though he seems to be a very mysterious man, everyone in Belize has this one perception of him. It was used a few years ago in one of the newspapers. He was called the White Devil, a white man, a foreign man coming to Belize with all his billions of dollars and money. The perception from the public is that this man is no good for Belize.

To be clear, Hippolito is not saying that Ashcroft, the man, is no good for Belize. He's saying that Ashcroft is an exemplar of a type of man, a modern-day colonialist who proclaims to be doing good. And he certainly does build things and support charities. It's just, in doing so, he also gets richer and increases his power.

When he comes into a room, your mind gets to working and to say, Okay, who is Michael Ashcroft? I've heard this from people in terms of his presence. And it's like Lord Valdeboard in Harry Potter. You know when they fly and they have this black smoke?

Which is funny because there is nothing objectively scary about Michael Ashcroft. For all the power he wields, when it comes down to it, he seems boring. Listen to this guy, appearing here on channel 5, one of the main TV stations in Belize. It's an Ashcroft friendly channel that was previously owned by one of his companies.

So I've probably worked harder in the first six weeks of the pandemic than I ever have in my life. But I'm out there in the mornings, as you well know, as we pass each other on our exercise, and I'm averaging five miles a day. I even bumped into the Prime Minister one morning on his walk.

And yet the fact that Lord Ashcroft has so much money has created an image in Belize that he's a person to fear because he's not afraid to wield his money like a weapon, and he's certainly not afraid of litigation. A lot of his disputes end up in court.

So that's the presence that he gives off to some people. Other people hate him because they know what he've done and what he continues to do. And other people are just like, That's the evil man.

I should stop here to say that Hip Bolido was not the first reporter I tried to hire to join our team. He was, I think, the fourth. And the first three passed on the job because they didn't want to have to cover Michael Ashcroft.

It's fear. Yes, it's fear. Not fear in the regular sense in terms of he would kill you or he would send someone to kill you, but fear because of this man has so much power in Belize. He's very strategic.

It's complicated, too, because this sense that he's ruthless, an embracer of loopholes, Lord Ashcroft seems proud of all that. He's proud of his success in business, his wealth, and the methods he used to get there. His fortune was, for the record, earned and not given, which is certainly not a claim his son Andrew can make so easily. We found a recording of Michael Ashcroft talking to some UK politicians back in 2013. For added context, Ashcroft had a history of working the tax system. He's practically gloating here about how he gives his liable income to charity to avoid tax.

From my own point of view, yes, I'm a notorious tax avoider. But I'd like you to know, in the confidence of this room, I still am. And I'm proud of it.

Other times, though, most times, he's shy about it. He's shy about all media that isn't friendly. Take this amusement encounter in 2017, when a BBC journalist reporting on information revealed in the Paradise Papers leak, tried to confront Ashcroft at the Tori Party conference. Did you, sir, secretly control a trust in which you had tens of millions, therefore avoiding tax, sir?

Did you do that?

It's fantastic TV, by the way. Ashcroft looks extremely flustered, and he walks quickly away into a bathroom. Where are we going? This is brilliant. And that reporter followed him right in. I'm really keen to get your view, sir. Listen carefully. That sound in the background, which sounds like a man saying, Dear, dear, dear, dear, on repeat, like it's some tick. That's exactly what it is. It is Michael Ashcroft walking swiftly away from uncomfortable questions while saying, Dear, dear, dear, dear, on a loop. This is the way to do it.

Because do you think if you did have money in that trust, you could, sir, face a big tax bill?

We're going for a walk. We're holding hands. This is lovely. This is what I hoped for. Just the chance to talk to you, sir. The argument that a businessman like Lord Ashcroft makes is that he is an economy booster, a job creator. His money improves Belize by creating new businesses. He put Belize as a banking center on the map. He built the main port. And if you're staying in Belize City on business, there's a good chance you're staying at the Radisson owned by Michael Ashcroft, which I know because this is where we stayed. My review, by the way, totally fine. 3.5 stars. My room had a lovely view of the water as well as Michael Ashcroft's Villa and the pier where he parks his yacht. Anyway, there's just broad acceptance that no matter what Lord Ashcross says, his main goal in basically everything is to help himself. Just check out these advertisements made by the UDP, Dean Barrow's Party, and the rival of Ashcross's Preferred Party, the PUP.

This PUP say they are for Belize, but they are all about themselves.

Ashcroft first, Belize second, is the PUP wave.

Michael Ashcroft returned to Belize. This guy, John Bersenio, Ashcroft's chief puppet, had moved back the National Party Convention that was scheduled for the weekend. Have they cut a deal to honor Ashcroft's evil deeds in exchange for election money? Johnny Bersenio and the PUP continued to sell out Belize. He came here to make money from Belize and its people. He's a businessman. I mean, I don't think he cares about the people. He's a businessman, and rightfully so, you care about revenue.

John Christensen, he sees this thing all the time. Wealth parties claiming they're investing in infrastructure or something to help local economies, when, of course, their interest is also in lining their own pockets. It's happening the world over, from Luxembourg to Bermuda to United Arab Emirates.

Yes, there are some jobs created in catering and maybe hospitality and maybe motor car maintenance and this, that, and the other, and some jobs in construction. But by and large, what they're not doing is they're not playing that entrepreneurial capitalistic role of investing in new products, new services, new this, that, and the other. And alongside that, because they're paying little or no tax at all, they're not contributing to public sector investment. So I think the very term investment needs to be looked at extremely closely.

Money is the key to this, but you also need power, and you use money to get it. When Lord Ashcroft started to invest in Belize, he was very strategic, and he took a close interest in the political landscape of the country, which is why one of the places he chose to put his money was in politics, and he backed the PUP, which, as we mentioned, was the minority party at the time. To reporters like Hippalito, which side he chose at that moment almost doesn't matter.

The People's United Party, PUP, and the United Democratic Party, UDP, are the two major political parties in Belize, and they are known collectively as the PUDP.

That's a nickname suggesting that there really isn't that much difference between the parties.

One of the similarities that these two massive parties have is the corruption, the inability to deal with corruption, to weed out corruption, and this practice of cronism, this practice of nepotism within the party, within their government. They do as a piece, they have a lot of power.

And if you try to go up against them, they're very vindictive. People are living in fear that when something is done to them, they're afraid to challenge the ministers of government, the Prime Minister and his ministers. This is Wellington Ramos, who worked as a policeman in Belize for for years before moving to the US to become a political science teacher who still writes often about criminal justice and corruption for Amandala, one of Belize's largest papers. According to Ramos, the rot goes deep. Money matters beyond paying off the people at the top. You cannot win any election in Belize without paying people to vote. Paying people to vote. You know where else I heard this? From Jasmine Harten. Oh, my gosh. They literally give you money at the voting pool. The day of election, they pay everyone anywhere from $50 to $200 for a vote. Well, technically, it's a little less blatant than that. They apparently give people money for gas, to get to the polls. But everyone knows what this is really about. So-called bacon houses pop up around the country at election time, as shown here in a rare report from channel 7.

These are phantom operations, right? These operate in a political nether zone where there's like a black site, a political black site.

Anyway, you saw it here, Bacon House. That's how it works.

And it has quite a line, many lining up for lunchtime bacon.

And it's not some isolated thing, according to Ramos. It's systemic. People have gotten used to it. So they're not voting for people because of substance, their character, their moral standing. People are voting because they're getting paid to vote. If they don't get paid, they don't vote.

The one with the most money, 9 out of 10 is going to win.

We are beginning to see politicians in Belize that have no substance, they don't have no education. It's all about money. This gives people with lots of money astronomical amounts of power, which, again, is true just about everywhere. We asked Lord Ashcroft to be interviewed about this and other matters. He declined. But through his lawyer, Ashcroft noted that his financial support of political parties in Belize is well known, not secret, and involves no impropriety. To be clear, it's not illegal to give loads of money to a candidate or a party, and there are no laws in Belize saying political donations have to be declared. We have no idea how much he or anyone else has donated to the PUP or the UDP. It's not something we can put a number on. But the belief that Michael Ashcroft wields incredible power and often just gets his way as a result is widely held. Locals consider this to be gospel, basically. So regardless of what's actually and truly going on behind the scenes, the perception among Belesians is that their country and its leaders are basically for sale. We heard this over and over.

I would imagine Michael Ashcroft is chumming with all politicians he wants to be chumming with. I mean, there's no really an opposition to him. I think it's more for him. Who can I be friend?

This is our house. This is our country. Remember this?

Here we are masters. Here we are sovereign. And there will be no more suffering of this one-man's campaign to subjugate an entire nation to his will. I think the public was tired that you had Ashcraft being the puppet master to these politicians. So you have the dean the leader of the country, now standing up to this British billionaire, and that's, I believe, he got a lot of praise for.

Except it isn't that simple. It never is, is it? We'll get into that after the break. White devil will return just after this.

Corruption can only be crushed, and democracy can only be real when the masses are empowered. But because we're so tribalized and divided politically, and it's money that makes that possible.

This is Audrey Matura talking about one of her favorite topics, the increasingly rotten nature of her country's institutions. Audrey started out first as a journalist, and has been a senator for the UDP, that's Barro's Party. Her varied career also includes a stint as President of the Christian Workers Union, and she's led an environmental NGO. She now works in private practice as a lawyer, but she's had a career right at the coalface of Belizeian politics. She's not afraid to get stuck in and stand up for what she believes in, and she's tangled with Ashcroft a few times. Once, she was summoned to his yacht to talk business.

I would not sit there and have him tell me bullshit like the other members of the party did. So he literally threw us off his yacht. I will not go into far details because the story is not about that, but that's my first encounter with him.

The public confrontation between Ashcroft and Barrow relates to one specific case that Audrey was adjacent to. Belize Telecommunications Limited had been created in 1987 when the UDP was in power. On January first, 1988, it was granted a 15-year exclusive license to operate the telecommunication services in Belize. Five years later, when control flipped to the PUP, the telecom company was sold to one of Michael Ashcroft's many companies. But in 2009, 17 years after that, he was forced to give it up. The government decided to nationalize BTL because this was a critical public utility, too important of a thing to be in private hands. And what happened next tells us a lot about Bullies. Ashcroft saw an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. Btl, in its new iteration, now called Belize Telemedia, Limited, took the government to court.

Any lawyer worth their salt would know that Michael Ashcroft would have won, not because he's the good guy, but because legally, our Constitution says you can't just take away someone's property and not compensate them for it.

It's not Not that they weren't going to compensate him for it at all, but Ashcroft felt the proposed valuation was way too low.

Michael Ashcroft at the time held a meeting with me as President of the Union, and he says to me, Ms. Matura, I'm not here with any agenda. I just wanted to have breakfast with you and talk to you. I've been following up all your writings, all the work you've been doing. You've not changed. You keep fighting for nationalism and nationalistic issues. Very impressive.

Ashcroft needed wide support within the government. It would help him with his case, and the union Audrey represented was influential.

At that meeting, Michael Ashcroft made it clear to me that he knows he would win his case. This was his second agenda. He says to me, But my fear is that when I win the case, I will not be able to collect. Because he's very savvy. He knows the law that, well, if you sue a private person, you can go after person's private property to enforce your judgment. But if you sue the government, you can't go after public property. So you have to hope the government will pay you.

It would be an empty judgment either way. Ashcroft could win, and he did. But this means nothing if the country literally can't afford to pay him.

And I said to him, Well, that would then give you a reason to broker payments, if you genuinely love Belize.

Ie to cut a deal that was fair, that the country could afford.

And I think part of me was still naive in that conversation. Force forward, a year's later, Michael Ashcroft wins the case, and we then owe him 500 million US, which is a billion Belize. Half of our GDP, we owe him.

So no matter how Dean Barrow sold this to the public as a great win for Belize, Ashcroft was already arguably the real winner because of where that final valuation landed. And that's not even the whole of it.

September of that year, Michael Ashcroft met with the then Prime Minister, Dean Barrow, secretly in a hotel in Miami, and got Dean Barro to sign a contract, where under contract, the Prime Minister guarantees that Michael Ashcroft will get his billion dollars. But not only that he will get it, that he will get it tax-free. And not only that he will get it tax-free, that he will get it in US dollars. And not only that he will get it in US dollars, that he will not have to pay any exchange control rates. I'm like, I shouldn't cost, but that's effing good.

It's a deal that seems to be in the interest of Michael Ashcroft and not in the interest of the Bayesian people Barrow is elected to represent. The Ashcroft camp contests this interpretation. They claim that Lord Ashcroft did not personally reap rewards here, that he had no financial interest in at the time of the sale back to the government. Ashcroft has claimed, in fact, a trust of his that benefits charities actually owned 70% of BTL, and that he was merely operating as a broker. He said as much publicly.

If there are profits to be made, then those profits will be distributed to charities in Belize.

That's hogwash. That's Dean Barrow, clearly not buying it. Why is that hogwash? Because ultimately, there's no question at all in anybody's mind that he is still the controlling force where telemedia is concerned. Regardless of who actually benefited, the facts remain. Prime Minister, Dean Barrow met a private citizen outside of the country and cut a deal without the oversight of government.

This is the very man the Prime Minister says, It's the White Devil. The very man whose law firm is still representing him.

This is one of the most confusing things about Belize. It's a small place. The most important people all know each other, literally, which means that often people's public, personal, and professional lives intersect in ways they probably shouldn't. White devil is pretty bold language to use publicly against your country's largest investor. To say nothing of some of the other things he's been called in the press, Puppet master, ungodly, a virus, especially considering how thoroughly Ashcroft protects his public image. But maybe it stung less because it was quite possibly all for show. Barrow is a lawyer, and it sure seems like the law firm where he was still a partner was profiting from its ties to that so-called White Devil. It was representing Ashcroft Alliance interests via the Bank of Belize.

The White Devil got what he wanted, but It doesn't end there. After we make it Allah, we will filter on payment so he gets more money on interest. The Prime Minister's brother then takes the matter to court saying that we don't have to pay Michael Ashcroff in US dollars.

This would be Dennis Barrow, Dean's brother, a prominent corporate lawyer whose firm is now working for the government.

I'm like, Holy shit. That's a losing case. But you know why I believe they do it? They get legal fees. And what the people in this country can't see that a lot of this litigation was just to line the pockets of a lot of our attorneys connected to the then government.

This may seem like a long walk from the Jasmine Harton saga, but Audrey knows Jasmine. She's given her legal advice at times, and she sees the shadow of this power all over her story.

That is the power Jasmine is fighting. That is what money buys. It buys people's hearts, soul, and conscience. They are the real devils. We've had countless stories of politicians doing so much wrong, and none has ever been convicted. All you see are murder, poverty, and corruption every day. You can't take on the system when the people who are the vanguard of the system are part of the problem.

The ministers then, they do a lot of stupidness. They get abused by the police force, all things in the sense of corruption.

If there was ever corruption legitimizing any jurisdiction. It's in this place that used to be Belize, a paradise, a Jew and untarnished.

What do we want, justice?

When do we want it? No. The reason Ashcrofts and any investor like him succeeded in Belize is because the masses, even the educated people, the people with degrees, they have reached a level of hopelessness. Like, why would I go fight against him getting X, Y, and Z when he'll get it anyway. Why would I put my name, my reputation, my job on the line? To fight on principle, when I'll be outnumbered, he'll get it away. So there's this level of hopelessness.

This feeling of hopelessness, of being powerless to do anything about the fucked up shit that's happening around you, it makes the entrenched power seem almost immovable. Audrey has a real life example that shows how this works. When she was working on Jasmine's case, she had to serve Andrew Ashcroff some papers to force him to appear in court. She hired an off-duty cop who worked on the side as a security guard for Andrew, and the guard, thinking it was just a simple task, served the papers.

Because he's naive. I mean, for him, he's just making extra money on the side. Do you know that guy tried to serve Andrew and left it there and served him? And after that, Andrew fired him. Police officer who's only doing a duty to serve you a legal document.

This is the entitlement powerful people feel and believe. You inconvenienced me by doing your job, by following the law. I'm upset about it. So fuck you. You're fired.

Why do you think you're above the legal system? Because in the island where he is, he's king. No police will touch Michael Ashgroff's son.

Audrey doesn't fault the people who choose not to confront this power, who just abide it. She can see their point of view.

So they might be only paying you $50 a day to be security, but it's $50 you would not have had. And when you are on the precipice of poverty or you're below the poverty line, every penny counts. Imagine how many people tolerate or in some way support or condone whatever because they're being paid. Not because they're necessarily corrupt, but because the system has left them in a position of poverty where their first inclination is survival for basic needs.

Except it doesn't have to be this way. Some critics like Audrey like to point out how much Michael Ashcroft has benefited from his businesses and beliefs while paying a relatively tiny amount in taxes. Not because he's evading, but because that's the way the laws are written. They could be rewritten if there was enough public pressure.

Our GDP is only 2 billion. I'm sure if we check the taxes, he has benefited more than that. But the average person can't sit and think about that. I'm thinking, how will I feed my child tomorrow?

Poverty in Belize is an ongoing concern, and it's not something that seems to be improving.

I remember when our The statistics was that poverty was at 13% of the population. Then it went to 33, then it went to 43. The last I check it was at 53, by my calculations. They're doing a census right now, but I think it's at 63. How people are surviving by shutting up and taking every little thing they could, by understanding that corruption pays, by doing things illegal and improper. I think that people either have to suffer more to realize that they have to rise up, or we just accept that our national Anthem should say that we're no longer a land of the free, we're a land of the corrupt. It's bad. We have a nation of people who feel hopeless, and maybe someday a leader will arise that will inspire them, or maybe they have to reach the point where our poverty line reaches 90%, then that will fight back.

Walington Ramos, the former cop and corruption fighter, agrees. Eventually, people are going to get fed up. The poverty in Belize is worse than when we became independent. Drugs is worse. Gangs is worse. Murders is worse. Almost every day, somebody is getting killed in the city of Belize due to gang, drugs. Those are the two main causes. But why are these people in guns and drugs because of poverty. But guess what? Oleg Al-Qassan teaches that we might be sowing the seeds for a revolution. You know who you don't want to be when a revolution breaks out? The guy on the yacht. But Jasmine Harden wasn't going to be saved by a revolution. She was lucky to have a lawyer. It's impossible to say whether or not either of the Ashcroft men or associates in their orbit have a thumb on the scales of justice in Belize. But it doesn't really matter either, because they don't even have to be the ones pulling strings or making directives. The entire system is built to protect the powerful. So the safe place would be on the yacht, where Jasmine was no longer welcome. But how did she get on board in the first place?

We came from a farm.

She grew up in a goat.

I was in for eight.

I was in for eight. Absolutely. We were so dog-poor.

So stupid.

Our house had no insulation, 30 below zero.

We wake up in the morning and our hair is stuck to the wall, frozen. That's next week on White Devil.

Under the shade I flourish, White Devil is a production of Campside Media in Association with Olive Bridge Entertainment.

The show was written and reported by me, Josh Dean, with the series producer, Joe Barrett. The story editor and sound designer is Mark McAdam, who also provided original music. Additional sound design by Joe Barrett. Studio engineering by Ewen Lytromuen. Our closing theme is Under the Shade I Flourish by Chris Halton and New Manhattan, including Eli Carvahal, Ava Carvahal, and Louis Chernyovski. This episode was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. The voice of Michael Ashcroft is Richard Croft. Additional research by Emma Simenoff and Reporting in Belize by Hippolito Navello. Artwork by Anthony Garace. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywen, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Simunoff, Destiny Dingle, and David Eichler. Campside Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriades, Adam Hoff, Matt Sher, and me, Josh Dean. At Olive Bridge, the executive producer is Will Gluck. If you enjoyed our show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. It really does help other people find the show. Here's a thought, maybe tell a friend to check out White Devil while you're at it. Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to White Devil, a podcast about power and privilege in a fragile paradise.

You can hear new episodes released weekly on Amazon Music.