Ashcroft pockets $40m from sale

TORY party benefactor Lord Ashcroft has sold his controlling stake in Belize Telecom for $57m (£30.5m) grossing the controversial financier a tidy $40m profit.

The sale, by one of Britain's richest men thought to be worth more than £500m, of a 52% Belize Telecom stake by Ashcroft's Carlisle group to the Belize government could help swell Tory Party coffers in time for the next General Election.

Carlisle group still owns the Bank of Belize, and Ashcroft has most of his monetary affairs based there for tax reasons.

Ashcroft was chairman of Belize Telecom but under his stewardship the telecoms company was denied government business that was given exclusively to the company's only competitor ICC, which admits it is losing $55,000 a day.

The stake sale follows claims that his firm was being unfairly excluded from government contracts. Ashcroft had proposed telecoms tariffs in the country be brought into line with international norms, but his arguments were rejected by the Belize authorities.

Ashcroft, a controversial figure in the City, once owned the house alarms to car auction business ADT and has donated millions of pounds to the Tory Party.

He was more recently back in the headlines as a board member of Tyco, the American conglomerate embroiled in an executive perks scandal. Tyco's former chief executive Dennis Kozlowski is currently standing trial in the US on fraud and tax evasion charges.