John McAfee claims a local politician sent machine-gun toting police to his new company's compound, where they killed his dog and collared him on trumped-up gun charges.

McAfee founder and anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee has reportedly been arrested in Belize on an unlicensed gun charge he claims was concocted. Members of the country's Gang Suppression Unit (GSU) collared McAfee after raiding his home and research facility on Wednesday, Channel 5 Belize reported earlier this week.

The 66-year-old McAfee described his arrest in a statement to Channel 5. He said 30 GSU officers carrying automatic weapons appeared on the Orange Walk Town compound in northwestern Belize where he lives and works at about 6 a.m., and claimed to have a warrant to search the premises.

The officers used sledgehammers to "break the doors of the buildingsnone of them were locked, but they just went and broke them in any case," McAfee said. He and 11 others on the compound were handcuffed and made to wait outside in the sun, where they were held for 14 hours without food or water, he claimed.

The GSU "murdered my dog in cold blood," McAfee said, as "a warning to us that this is serious, don't mess with us."

McAfee was eventually arrested for having an unlicensed firearm, a charge he claimed was "bogus." He said that at the beginning of the raid, a GSU officer took all of the licenses for the guns used for security on the compound but one of the went "missing" when the officer was checking licenses against the guns they found on the site.

The software tycoon has a reputation as a philanthropist in Belize, according to Channel 5. He reportedly donated a $1.2 million boat to the Belize Coast Guard in 2009 and gave cash and charitable gifts to other institutions in the country, including the police.

McAfee claimed in the statement given to Channel 5 that he was harassed and arrested by the GSU because an Orange Walk district politician had pressured him for similar monetary gifts, but he had refused.

"It began, innocently enough, with my refusal to donate to the local political boss of the district where I lived in Orange Walk and I have given at least $2 million dollars in gifts to the police departments in Orange Walk, San Pedro, Belize City, to the village of Carmelita, the City of Orange Walk," McAfee said.

"I have started programs to feed children, I've helped mothers whose husbands have simply disappeared. I am an old man, I am 66. I have a fair amount of money and not much to do," he said. "So I spend it where I think it will do good. And I don't ever invest in politics. I don't donate to any political party, I don't have any political affiliations."

"And I refused to donate and the gentleman expected you know, I've given a million dollars to the police department, so he should get a huge chunk and he got nothing," he continued.

McAfee said he was detained until 2 a.m. on Thursday at a police station and only released after his embassy intervened.

"The entire day was an incredible nightmare," he said. "This is clearly a military dictatorship where people are allowed to go and harass citizens based on rumor alone and treat them as if they are guilty before any evidence whatsoever is obtained. It is astonishing, it is beyond belief and I intended not to let this stand. I will not stand idly by to let this happen to me."

Belize is a former British colony and the only country in Central America where English is the official language. McAfee was born in England but raised in Virginia, where he attended college, and went on to work as a programmer for NASA, Univac, Xerox, and Lockheed before founding anti-virus developer Network Associates, which eventually became McAfee.

McAfee, whose personal fortune of $100 million was reportedly decimated during the global economic recession, founded a new company based in Belize in 2010. QuorumEx seeks to develop better ways to combat pathogenic bacteria through anti-quorum sensing medicines.

Intel acquired that software security company McAfee founded in 2010.