Aussie Jetstar workers held in Vietnam
 

From the West Australian:

Vietnamese authorities have arrested the former head of Jetstar Pacific and prevented two of its Australian employees from leaving the country after the carrier reported losses on fuel contracts, state media said.
Luong Hoai Nam, 47, former general director of Jetstar Pacific Airlines - a partnership between the government’s investment arm SCIC and Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd - was taken into police custody in Hanoi on Thursday, the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said.
Online newspaper Vietnamnet reported that two Australian executives of Jetstar Pacific, identified as Daniela Masilli and Tristan Freeman, were not allowed to leave the country.

A spokesman at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed that the two Australians have been prevented from leaving Vietnam and said the Australian embassy in Hanoi is seeking further details.
The Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted a report by state investigators that Nam and the two Australian deputy general directors flouted a board of directors resolution on buying aviation fuel futures, leading to losses of more than $US31 million ($A33.81 million).
The resolution only allowed the general director and his two deputies to buy fuel futures up to the end of 2008, but they extended the purchase until May last year, the report said.
Police also searched Nam’s homes and offices in Hanoi and the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City, the newspaper said.
Officials at Jetstar Pacific and police were not immediately available for comment.
State media has quoted Nam as saying that most airlines in the world suffered losses from buying fuel futures because of volatile oil prices over the past two years which peaked at $US143 per barrel and then slumped to as low as $US39 per barrel.
In 2007, Australia’s Qantas bought 18 per cent of Pacific Airlines and turned it into a low-cost airline, operating as Jetstar Pacific. Qantas’s stake has since increased to 27 per cent.
Nam was the general director of Pacific Airlines since 2004 and resigned late last year citing personal reasons.
AP

interesting news from the land of pho bo and honda wave's...

One would hope that the DFAT officials act accordingly to protect the legal rights of the involved Australian individuals and ensure a just investigative process prevails...

Given the volume of Australian aid and surge in foreign investment since Vietnam's succession to the WTO, this should prove an interesting test of practiced standards of legal transparency and diligence in Vietnam.


:ok: Sandy...

Fill 'er up mate!
 

This is not Qantas bashing but....

1. DFAT will do absolutely nothing to help these guys that would possibly endanger the career prospects of any Australian employee of DFAT. That has been proven time and again. The applicable phrase is "All assistance short of actual help".

2. Working with Asian companies in partnerships works like this....

The Asians are not supposed to lose money - ever.

Western partner is supposed to lose money and at some point Asian partner buys them out, then the business starts making money.

To put it another way, Qantas's overseas investments are a waste of time and money that will absorb far too much Board and senior management time, let alone money, compared to their eventual value. Give it away now. There is nothing Qantas has in the way of expertise that Asians can't access for themselves without a partner.

To put it yet another way; the list of western companies that have bankrupted themselves trying to make money in Asia is very long.

Vietnam scores poorly for corruption, political rights, press freedom & civil liberties. Overall it ranks 131th out of 150 on the democracy profile.
On the corruption scale it ranks 94 out of 149.
But the business Masters of the Universe know better & can roll all before them.
Source: WorldAudit.org

To put it yet another way; the list of western companies that very profitably and successfully operate in Asia is very long.

They include Proctor & Gamble, Shell, BP, Amoco, Texaco, Occidental Petroleum, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Kenn Borek, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Cisco, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, BHP, ANZ Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young, etc ad infinitum.

Sunfish, give it a rest, eh? :ugh:

Jetstar executives questioned in Vietnam over $34 million
From: news.com.au January 08, 2010 4:22PM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share Add to Digg Add to del.icio.us Add to Facebook Add to Kwoff Add to Myspace Add to Newsvine What are these? TWO senior Jetstar Pacific executives are reportedly being questioned in Vietnam and are not allowed to leave the country.

The chief operating officer, Daniela Marsilli, and the chief financial officer, Tristan Freeman, are being questioned over the loss of almost $34 million linked to petrol reserves costs, the ABC reports.

Jetstar Pacific's former chief executive, Luong Hoia Nam, was arrested yesterday.

A spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said authorities had prevented two Australian employees of the company from leaving Vietnam.

Tailwheel is right and so is Sunfish
 

A business deal has gone south and money has been lost, someone must pay and someone must be punished and it won’t be the Vietnam Govt.

Tailwheel, you’re right because all of these companies would have exercised due diligence upon due diligence and then some. They would have made sure they understood the industry, the market, the SWOT analysis and most of all the people they were about to hop into bed with.

Sunfish, you’re right because Qf, (in Dixon’s haste to expand J*’s empire) would have slipped up on a few of the above, most of all on understanding their new business partners, they being the W & the T in SWOT.

I cannot imagine for a moment there has been anything dishonest or underhanded in Qf’s handling of this matter. It’s probably a combination of not understanding the lay of the land and the Qf juggernaut going up there to reinvent everything and tell ‘em how it’s gonna be. It doesn’t work like that in Asia, particularly in Vietnam.


One could conclude, (by the advanced state of things with J* and Air Asia) that Qf saw this ****estorm looming and decided to cut & run, meanwhile leaving J* Pacific management to mop up the mess.

fin review today suggested the 1 arrest and 2 non detentions are political re hedging losses.
someone with egg-foo-yum on face not happy and wanting to move the blame?

Tailwheel,

I think he was referring to any JV with an asian organisation. The companies you mention are not involved in any joint ventures, they are their own entity.

However, you will find some of these companies are in JV under another name and what Sunfish mentions is not far from the truth!

Just a thought :
The wee little one says that they have just lost the money on hedging like every other airline.
Did every other airline lose an average of 6 and a bit million per aircraft ( fleet of 5 for US 31 million loss ) :confused:
The local news in 'Nam ( yeh I know, questionable credibility ) is insinuating a certain pair of Aussies ignored the wishes of the rest of the board, serious allegations indeed :eek:

hongkongfooey is right, this pair decided they were smarter than the board and went against their wishes and decided they knew all about fuel hedging. The end result was a loss of an significant amount of money not to be sneezed at especially when it is mainly government money as the airline is still 70% owned by them. Of concern for the investigators is the lack of traceability of where this money has gone, you don't mess with government money in this country.

It is not just the fuel hedging that is being investigated but apparently mis management of the airline, tax evasion and safety issues.
The above appears to be typical of the management team from JQ/QF in Vietnam, being often quoted 'this is not how we do it at Jetstar/Qantas' or when dealing with the local authority the CAAV its 'this is not the way CASA would do it'.

At the end of the day it is not that hard to work or do business in Vietnam, you just have to understand the lay of the land and the fact it is a different place to Australia which i think some of these people never came to grips with.

The media in Australia has been slow to pick up this story and JQ/QF has been keeping it quite. Locally they have been running it for a long time especially since the termination late last year of two long serving foreign engineers (one Kiwi and one Ozzie) who were sacked because as they say for raising safety matters within the airline. An investigation was carried out by the CAAV and it was found that the claims of unsafe operations were true plus a lot more as well as finding the terminations were illegal. Prior to this the JQ/QF management (including the two currently held) were stating none of the claims made were true and that as they had the backing of the safest airline in the world (Qantas) everything was fine. After the investigation they were very quite but the results had a big impact on the airline with managers found to have obstructed the investigation, some suspended, terminated or removed from their positions, LAE licenses taken and the maintenance activities of the airline restricted until they got their act together including the revoking of the ability to carry out A checks on the aircraft which had to be flown overseas to Singapore.

The operation of the airline has become a real mess with at times only two aircraft out of the fleet of six flying, the others AOG awaiting repair or spare parts, this having created many angry passengers left stranded at airports around Vietnam. Though some improvements to the operation have occurred it appears that the Jetstar cutting costs has gone to far by the implanted JQ/QF managers, perhaps focusing on their bonuses at the end of their two year contract rather than the future of the airline.

In the local media questions are being asked about the high salaries of these foreign managers- $20K USD a month, plus luxury accommodation and bonus when over the last two years significant losses have been made at the airline.

When Qantas first invested into the airline hopes were high that big things would happen but this never got off the ground, granted the tough fight with Vietnam Airlines, economic crisis and high fuel prices have not helped, the management control of the airline by the JQ/QF implants has been seen to be very poor and to blame for the current state of the operation. Some are speculating that Qantas are not interested in making money here rather promote their brand for Jetstar Asia and Jetstar Australia.

At the end of the day as the old saying goes when there is smoke there is fire, these two have broken (or bent) the rules and will be held to account for this. To compare this with Rio Tinto Executive Stern Hu detained in China as some media outlets in Australia have implied is wrong, Vietnam is a lot smarter than this.

Since the introduction of economic reforms or Doi Moi in 1986 the country has held its arms open to foreign investment and is not about to put this at risk by playing political games. The government here understands the international implications on the country of holding two foreign nationals as part of its investigation and i sure there will be transparency on this issue.

So it looks like Jet* Singapore hasn't worked out, nor has Jet* Pacific. I wonder what the majority government owned Malaysian airlines might have to say about the QF/Jet*/Air Asia tie up?

Higher wages are part of the cost that the QF group may have to "endure" to enjoy the advantages of transparent and open government regulation.

In support of his executives AJ should hop on a plane and go and sort this out :E

For anyone that hasn't worked there you must understand that living and working in Vietnam is different to most places, or it certainly was when I did it back in the 1990s.

Hopefully it has improved a LOT, but by the sound of this maybe not enough yet.

I was part of a group that operated the first ''western'' airliner there, and although we were operating FOR the Vietnam Government under the banner of Vietnam Airlines, they made operating VERY difficult.

Don't get me wrong, NOT the people they were GREAT, but the Government.

Everything from we were not allowed a phone line at first for fears we would spread anti Vietnam messages by fax or phone, had to send, and receive all messages via the Hotel office centre where they were checked (censored) before we sent them or received them.

Took us months to get all the manuals in to Vietnam, as they had to be checked.

They have a very different idea too on law and order, on the way to the airport one day the (local) driver of our Crew bus was stopped by Police for supposedly going through a red light, they just took him away and we had to sit there waiting for another driver.

We managed to survive and finish the contract somehow, and at that time there were other Aussie Companies (apart from ours) operating there including the ANZ bank and Telstra.

Also VERY touchy then about advertising especially anything American, I had to go in to the Airport one day when our Aircraft was idle, had these Government Censors with me, had to run all of our movies we had on board for showing in flight. They were NOT concerned about any violence, they LOVED that, but forbid us to use any that had shall we say adult themes and especially any that showed big advertisements, as lots of movies do, for say Coke or Maccas etc.

As I said, sure it has improved since then, GREAT people in general, but so different to anywhere else in the World I have worked.

That concurs with what a friend of mine has told me. He was involved in setting up JV's for the establishment of a number of Western branded 5 star hotels.

Before he would let any western executive operate in the country they had to do a "cultural awareness course".

This ensured, as far as practicable that they didn't run foul of the local authorities by acting like....westerners.

It appears these Jetstar execs were babes in the woods in how they carried out their functions in Vietnam and are now getting their education first hand.

Sandliands is wrong in this case - the line he is peddling here is from one of his back door QF sources who is part of the push to shape the ground to provide an excuse for the imminent failure of the JQP project.

Read lost in Saigons post carefully. He is right on the money according to my sources.

The JQ execs need not worry though, they are a protected species in the Qantas group and regardless of any incompetence or illegal behaviour they will not be held accountable.

No doubt the operational losses incurred have already been sheeted home to the appropriate Qantas cost centre.

We should have had one of those courses, but were just left to work it out.

I almost got arrested in Hanoi one night, would have been except for our Company having some very high up contacts, just for doing something any normal Westerner would do, that didn't know the local rules.

We had permanent rooms in Saigon at the Rex, at that time probably one of the better ones, but this day I had to overnight in Hanoi, so as I was NOT leaving Vietnam, as we often did, only still staying IN Vietnam I left most of my valuables including my passport in the safe in my Hotel room in Saigon.

Well what a drama, ALL Foreigners were supposed to have their passport with them even INSIDE Vietnam. :ooh:

Originally posted by Lost in Saigon

May be easier to read.

What I find ironic about this, is that it is all about fuel. :rolleyes:

When we were there, Qantas used to transit Saigon once a week or so (can't remember exactly how often) and they NEVER uplifted fuel there as they didn't trust the quality of it. :eek:

We used it though (had to) in similar B767, as did TEA and Regionair later on.