Expats kicked out – follow up I Dear Expats,
As many have emailed me with me their best wishes, advice and requests for updates; I’ll update all at once! It feels like such a long time has passed since the 24th of June when my colleagues were man handled from the offices of Avianova. Since then there has been a lot of press interest and coverage in Russian, UK & US main stream papers. Many naturally drew ties to the other indecent events Alfa were party to over the past few years. The underlying issues remain, it’s a simple Russian style shareholder show-down; anywhere else in the world there would be laws protecting both employee and shareholder but not, apparently, in Russia and especially not if Alfa Group is involved. What’s happened since the 24th of June? Well… the senior management team continued to talk with suppliers to try and keep the airline from folding and continue to do so where possible despite the following: The illegal CEO issued a release firstly saying we never worked there, then he reverted by saying we were under ‘investigation’ and most recently issued a statement that we were under investigation and at the end of which (at a board meeting on 18th July) we would be terminated (got to love how they can predict the outcome of their ‘investigations’) Our mobile phones were tapped so we bought ‘ready to go’ phones, these too were hacked in a matter of hours. My personal blackberry had an Irish simm which made it harder to tap so they stole it, I replaced it and it was gone again within 10 hours. Last week my legal advisor ‘strongly’ advised me to leave the country as he caught wind of more nasty games being played, so with 24 hours notice I packed the family (wife and 3 young children) with as much as they could fit in their 20Kg allowance and left for the safety of a financially ruined Ireland. Feeling a little less stressed and security conscious I sat and admired the rain falling, thinking it was all now thousands of miles away.. I wish I could end it here but if you’ve read this far you’ll be hanging for the next part of the saga. On Saturday the 2nd of July the offices of the pilot training centre Avianova use were broken into and the airlines files stolen – no, this office is nowhere near Russia! On the 6th of July my personal email (gmail) was hacked and the hacker traced back to Moscow. So what next…? I’ve been told that the events thus far is a standard MO for Alfa and that their next step (prior to the board meeting on 18th July) will be to justify their illegal coup by fabricating charges against all involved.. I’ll probably be labeled an Irish spy by the end of this week! They have managed (and probably always do) to create so much smoke to confuse the shareholder negotiations with, instead of simply doing business with ‘currently’ interested parties but instead trying all their dirty tactics to strong arm a better price for their investment – the management are merely chips in an everyday game of Russian Hold’em I hope I’ll less to update you with next week, perhaps I’ll change my email from thirstyforeigner (it did make sense when I was living in Kuwait) to SpyingPaddy.
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