Energy, Bananas and Israeli Cash

IT was a rare week for business scandal: three tangled tales of million-dollar misdeeds grabbed the headlines simultaneously. In Washington, federal energy officials confirmed suspicions that overcharges by oil suppliers during last year's period of Arab embargo and shortage had cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which the Government has ordered refunded. In New York City, United Brands, famous for its Chiquita bananas, admitted bribing officials of Honduras, setting off an uproar that threatens government stability in that country. In Tel Aviv, the indictment of a highly placed Israeli executive on charges of siphoning cash out of the country opened up a story of troubles in a Geneva bank that could cause heavy losses to investors round the world. Details of the three cases:

Embargo Rip-Offs

As it wends its way from well to gasoline tanks or home furnaces, oil passes through many hands. During the shortages bred by the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, some of those hands took too much out of buyers' pockets; prices in many cases reached levels that did not seem justified by even the rapid run-up in quotes for Middle Eastern crude. Boston-based New England Power Co., for example, was so desperate for fuel in January 1974 that it paid $23.75 per bbl. for 127,479 bbl., when the going price to other utilities was only $12.05. At about the same time, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power paid $25 per bbl. for 150,000 bbl. bought from a New York oil broker.

Widening Hunt. Last week Federal Energy Administration investigators added up the score on overcharges discovered so far and came up with some impressive totals. The Government has already ordered rebates or price rollbacks of $160.6 million by major segments of the U.S. oil industry. Another $243 million could be refunded as a result of cases still open, and a further $76 million in refunds could flow from a separate investigation of price increases on propane (bottled gas). In addition, the Government has refused to allow the oil companies to pass on to their customers $412 million in accumulated costs. Some of the bigger names on the list of oil companies making refunds or being forced to swallow costs: Ashland, Atlantic Richfield, Continental, Skelly, Phillips, Amerada Hess, Sun, Shell, Texaco. Among the larger refunds or rollbacks are Charter Oil's $19.8 million and Kerr-McGee's $23.5 million.

FEA officials contend that they have found little evidence of criminal intent on the part of suppliers in cases settled so far. Most of the overcharges, they say, resulted from confusion and varying interpretations of the Government's complex pricing regulations. But FEA and other federal agencies are also pressing a rapidly widening hunt for possible criminal violations of the oil price controls passed by Congress in November 1973. U.S. Customs Service agents, for example, are poring over import records in 35 U.S. ports, checking for inaccurate or incomplete entries on tanker manifests and invoices by more than 40 companies.

The federal sleuths suspect that schemes existed to jack up prices that involved dizzying multiple transactions and offshore shuffles of oil. Venezuelan oil, which began rising in price even before the embargo, would be shipped, say, to The Netherlands Antilles, there to be blended with then cheaper Middle Eastern oil and shipped to the U.S. at the higher Venezuelan price. In a typical case, $6 residual oil, used to fire utility boilers, was resold at $ 17 and later soared to $23 and $24 during the embargo crisis. Another apparent pattern: passing oil through as many as half a dozen middlemen, some of them nonexistent "sham corporations "--with the price going up each time.

Federal investigators have yet to prove that all of this actually happened or, if it did, what parts were legal or illegal. So far, only one grand jury is known to have been empaneled, in Jacksonville. It is looking into alleged overcharges to the Jacksonville Electric Authority, which received fuel during the crisis from a Coral Gables company partially owned by a Houston conglomerate and the Corporacidn Venezolana del Petroleo, the state-owned oil and gas company in Venezuela. Company officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Civil Cases. Thus far, the FEA has referred only twelve cases to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. FEA initially concentrated on developing civil cases that could lead to refunds, a practice that has brought it under criticism for laxity in policing the industry. Last week a House Commerce Subcommittee heard testimony from Customs and Florida officials about three purported attempts by FEA to stop the Jacksonville grand jury probe so that FEA could pursue a civil case. T. Edward Austin, a state prosecutor in Jacksonville, testified that as recently as last month he had felt that the FEA was trying to "pull me back" from pursuing the grand jury investigation. FEA officials denied these accusations, and General Counsel Robert Montgomery repeated an earlier pledge by his boss Frank Zarb: from now on, in cases that raise a strong suspicion of willful lawbreaking, criminal prosecution will take priority over civil actions.

Honduran Bribery

Early one morning last February, Eli M. Black, 53-year-old chairman of United Brands Co., created a major mystery by smashing a quarter-inch-thick glass window in his Manhattan office and plunging through it to his death on the pavement 44 floors below. Black's relatives said that they knew of nothing that might have driven the executive, who was a descendant of ten generations of rabbis and a former rabbi himself, to take his life. Business associates also were puzzled--though they noted that his company, a gangling conglomerate, had lost $46.8 million in 1974 on sales of more than $2 billion. As it does following the unusual death of the head of any large U.S. business, the Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation into the company's operations. Last week a grisly clue to Black's despair surfaced: he had been at the center of an about-to-break case of international bribery that might topple the government of Honduras, hurt U.S. relations with Latin America and cause United Brands still greater losses.

The Wall Street Journal, which had learned the results of the SEC probe, extracted from United Brands a public admission that last year it had paid a $1.25 million bribe to a high official in Honduras--and speculation immediately centered on none other than the chief of state of the country, Oswaldo Lopez Arellano. The bribe was offered in order to win a reduction in a 500 export tax on every 40-lb. box of the bananas that United Brands grows in Honduras and sells in the U.S., mostly under the "Chiquita" trademark. The company's statement said that Black had authorized the bribe and another of equal size that was to have been paid later. The payments were made by foreign subsidiaries of United Brands, whose books had been falsified to conceal the transactions. United Brands maintained that it had disclosed this information voluntarily to the SEC shortly after Black's suicide.

Permanent Injunction. Only hours after the Journal story appeared, the SEC filed suit against the company. It charged that United Brands had violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by making false statements regarding company expenditures and by actually making unreported payments. These included an additional $750,000 paid since 1970 to officials of a European country "in connection with the securing of favorable business opportunities." The names of Germany and Italy promptly popped up in the press.

The SEC suit asked only for a permanent injunction against similar actions in the future--oddly enough, bribing officials of foreign governments does not in itself violate any U.S. law.

The business penalties for United Brands could far exceed any legal ones. At least two shareholders have already filed suit asking that the bribe money be repaid to the company by its board or by Black's estate. Publicity about the bribes could easily lead Honduras to expropriate the company's plantations, which supply about 16% of the bananas that United Brands sells.

In Latin America, the scandal had a decidedly dej`a vu quality. Under its former name of United Fruit Co., United Brands' banana operations had been synonymous with Yanqui imperialism; United Fruit was widely known as el pulpo, or the octopus. More than one Latin government that got in its way fell. Since merging United Fruit with his own AMK Corp. in 1970 to form United Brands, however, Black had been trying to bury the el pulpo image. By paying high wages, providing workers with low-cost housing, building schools and operating well-equipped hospitals, he had earned a reputation as a businessman with a social conscience.

In Honduras, President Lopez, 53, has vehemently denied receiving any bribes, and hastily appointed a blue-ribbon commission headed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the republic's capital, to find out who did. Lopez, who overthrew a liberal government in a bloody 1963 coup led by tanks, rules by decree. But lately he has been in political trouble with his own four-man Superior Council of the Armed Forces; two weeks ago, he was abruptly replaced as head of the army by one of his strongest rivals, Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar Castro. The bribery case can only create more trouble for him, United Brands and U.S. diplomacy.

Missing Millions

Within the Israeli government, Michael Tzur was a highly regarded financial expert. He managed with distinction a succession of key posts, most recently managing director of The Israel Corp., a firm created with the encouragement of the state to channel investments into the nation's industry and its tourist business. Last week, however, after six months of investigation, a district court in Tel Aviv indicted Tzur on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. The accusations are the latest developments in a complex contretemps that involves, besides the state of Israel, a Baron de Rothschild, a shady Swiss bank with a record of ties to the Mafia, secret Liechtenstein trust accounts, a hero of the World War II Hungarian underground and scores of millions in missing funds.

Between 1970 and 1974, according to last week's indictment, Tzur illegally transferred about $16.2 million from The Israel Corp. and two of its subsidiaries to a Liechtenstein credit trust. The trust was controlled by Tibor Rosenbaum, president of the International Credit Bank (I.C.B.) in Geneva. Apparently, Rosenbaum withdrew the illegal deposits--along with other funds that he transferred from his bank to Liechtenstein trusts--to pay off mounting debts incurred by his other enterprises, mostly real estate ventures.

Press reports of trouble at I.C.B. last fall started a run on deposits that Rosenbaum was unable to meet. In October he was forced to close the bank, and the Swiss government granted him a temporary moratorium on its payments. Now rumors are growing that because Rosenbaum is unable to raise money to pay his debts, which are estimated to be about $136 million, the Swiss may soon lift the moratorium. In that case, the bank would collapse, Rosenbaum would be bankrupt and the thousands of investors and depositors in I.C.B.--mostly Jewish--would probably lose virtually everything that they had put into the bank.

Soon after rumors of I.C.B.'s plight began circulating, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, chairman of The Israel Corp., ordered an investigation. A report on his findings, released in Israel last December, asserts that The Israel Corp. "was a victim of criminal misconduct," and specifically blames Tzur and Rosenbaum. Rothschild has filed criminal charges against Rosenbaum in Geneva, which have yet to be acted upon, and initiated the proceedings against Tzur, who faces a possible 22-year sentence.

Singled Out. Rosenbaum, the key figure in the complex saga, founded I.C.B. in 1959. A short, bull-necked dynamo of a man, he is, says one Swiss banker, "the kind of guy who seemed to know everybody." His bank had the reputation of taking money from anyplace, paying richer-than-average returns and investing in risky high-yielding ventures. I.C.B. was singled out by LIFE in 1967 as one of the Swiss banks that accepted funds that the Mafia had skimmed from casinos in the U.S. and the Bahamas, then recycled into

Mob-controlled American businesses.

At the same time, Rosenbaum, who played a major role in rescuing many of his fellow Jews during the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary, developed close relations with Israeli leaders. I.C.B. financed oil deals and huge, hushed arms transactions for Israel. Rosenbaum was also highly respected by many Jews around the world, who often used his bank to deposit funds for investment in Israel; indeed, until February he was treasurer of the World Jewish Congress.

A typically grandiose land speculation in Italy is believed to have been the main cause of Rosenbaum's trouble. He borrowed $30 million to acquire and improve a 1,200-acre site just outside Rome that formerly belonged to the Italian royal family. Rosenbaum hoped to get the land rezoned for residential construction, which would have boosted the site's value to $150 million. Instead, the Italian government decided to zone it for park land, and Rosenbaum was left with debts, including fees and interest payments, of about $75 million.

Thus Rosenbaum's empire was under intense pressure when the world recession hit Europe, causing stock markets to plunge and interest rates to soar. A desperate need for capital seems to have led Rosenbaum to use his Liechtenstein accounts to transfer funds siphoned from the bank to his other enterprises. Apparently Rosenbaum believed that he would eventually recoup and pay the money back.

Investigations are continuing, and the full story has yet to be told. Israeli officials insist that whatever losses The Israel Corp. suffers will not impair its soundness. But it is agreed that the scandal has, among other things, hurt the country's strained economy: compared with 1973, foreign investment in Israel last year was down by 50%.

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