Selling our house in Boynton Beach and moving to our new digs at Devonshire has been a rather hectic time for us.  Hence, my inability to devote time to add to my Blog.  Now that we have almost settled down, I hope to revert to my periodic Posts.

  

Getting back to 1981, I had just about settled in my cramped quarters in the KU office when I received a memo from the Commercial Director asking me to oversee the U.S. operations in addition to my duties as Commercial Adviser.  The CD’s memo was copied to the local Manager who took umbrage as this now meant that I would be looking over his shoulder.  

He promptly made calls to his contacts in Kuwait and soon thereafter, both of us received instructions to proceed to London to meet the Chairman who was visiting that station.  The Chairman told the Manager that while administratively, he would continue to report to the Head Office, on matters concerning marketing and sales, he would need to take my advice.  

Unfortunately, the relations between the two of us did not take a turn for the better.  Nonetheless, I decided to get more involved in the revenue earning activities of the region and made visits to all the offline sales offices.  This was achieved on the occasions when I was not traveling overseas under my original brief - assignments given to me by the Chairman or the Commercial Director.  

During my talks with the Sales Managers in the offline stations (Washington, DC, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto) I learnt that they had very small budgets for entertainment.  When I checked with the Station Accountant, he confirmed that while the total Publicity and Entertainment budget of the region was in the “high six (6) figures”, only a flat amount of $500 was given to each Sales Manager annually, including the SM - New York.

The balance of the budget was utilized by the Manager, USA & Canada.  When I asked the Accountant for details, he demurred and stated that he could not give me the figure until he received clearance from the Manager.  Following a confrontation which I would have liked to avoid, but could not, I did get the figures and how this budget had been spent during the current and past years.

The information I received was staggering as the vast bulk of the amount was not being spent on actual promotion; it was spent on many questionable items.  On my next visit to Kuwait, I raised the issue with the Commercial Director.  He told me very confidentially that Kuwait Airways (KU) has purposes other than operating an airline and if “occasionally”, I did come across something or an incident that does not appear “normal” to me, I should turn a blind eye to it.

And that led me to discover a number of “odd” incidents/happenings.

One, it appeared that the Manager - USA & Canada had direct access to the Dy. Prime Minister/Foreign Minister who came to New York annually to attend the U.N.General Assembly.  Once the meetings had concluded, the Minister, along with his entourage, moved to a villa in the suburbs of New Jersey.  The Local Manager joined them and was away from the office for a whole week.  I later learnt through the grapevine that, in addition to providing certain “services”, he was also cooking meals for the team.

Two, very expensive gifts were purchased from Cartier, Tiffany and Dunhill and distributed to the Dy. Prime Minister and members of his entourage.  Similar gifts were personally hand delivered by the Manager to senior executives at Head Office whenever he visited Kuwait or they, in turn visited the USA.  No records of such gifts were kept.

Three, the Sales Manager in Houston usually took a whole month off every summer and this absence was not offset against his leave entitlement.  I happened to be visiting London one summer and was invited by the Dy. Chairman/DGCA, Sheik Jaber Al-Sabah for lunch in his apartment.  Guess who was there - the Sales Manager from Houston.  During my visit, I saw him make and serve drinks & snacks for everyone.  He even lit  a cigarette and placed it in Sheik Jaber’s lips and did all odd jobs, usually accomplished by a servant or man Friday.

When I met this Sales Manager on one of my visits to Houston, I asked him why he performed such menial jobs for the Sheik and he said that the Sheik had paid the mortgage of his house and in addition, helped him financially and so, he had no alternative.  Also, his job in KU was secure so long as he continued to serve the Sheik.

Four, the Sales Manager in Chicago performed certain roles that had no relation to his job.  For example, he duplicated TV shows on cassettes and sent them to the Chairman on a regular basis in the official mail bag.  He constantly hosted the family of the Chairman - I met the Chairman’s sister-in-law at his house.  She was his guest for a week.

Five, the case of the Sales Manager in Washington, DC was truly unique and I will speak about it in detail in my future Posts.

There were, however,  three Sales Managers who performed their job functions as required.  They were in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles.  Interestingly, the first two lost their jobs soon after I left KU.  They did not have a godfather in Kuwait.

The Manager - USA & Canada was transferred to Paris about a year after my arrival in New York and in his place, Head Office appointed a relatively young and junior Kuwaiti.  At the same time, my role changed and I became the Regional Head for the Americas.  Soon after taking over this appointment, I listed out the job junctions of the Manager with emphasis on Administration and smooth operations at JFK airport.  I told him that all Sales Managers would henceforth report to me.

I was, therefore, surprised when I received a call from the airport manager late one Saturday evening of an incident at JFK.  It appeared that on a pre-flight check, an inebriated person was found sitting in the aircraft.  None of the passengers had yet been boarded but their baggage had been loaded.  I enquired if the Manager - USA had been informed and was told that they could not locate him.

Before leaving for the airport, I instructed the Airport Manager to remove the aircraft to a remote location and offload all baggage.  We physically checked each piece of baggage before reloading it and again screened all passengers.  By the time I left the airport, we still had been unable to locate the Kuwaiti manager.

The following Monday we sent a report of the incident to Kuwait and I asked that a team be sent to JFK to review our security procedures and received an assurance that this would be done.

Meanwhile, the young Kuwaiti manager appeared on Monday afternoon and when I questioned him, was informed that he had gone out of the state of New York with some Kuwaiti students.  He said that since it was a weekend , he did not feel the need to inform me of his decision to leave station.  I gave him a royal dressing down and told him that while he did not need my permission to leave town, he had to keep me informed as during the weekend we had two flights and one of his main responsibilities was JFK airport. He was very apologetic when he learned of the incident during the weekend.

Head Office did send a Security team to New York, but they did not stop there and proceeded directly to Washington, DC.  My Sales Manager informed me that they were closeted with Kuwaiti embassy officials for four days and he had been unable to speak with any of them.  I then learnt from the airport manager JFK that the team had reappeared late on an afternoon and left for Kuwait.  He was completely in the dark of what transpired in Washington

Interestingly, I never received any report of their findings nor was any change made in the security procedures at JFK.  After consulting Stephen Rajaratnam in Kuwait, I decided that this was another incident which required me to “turn a blind eye” to it.