Rocky Times for a Highflyer

A dealer in politics and planes loses a hot seller

From East Africa to Capitol Hill, a lot of lofty political leaders have a working relationship with Businessman James Wilmot. James who? His name is scarcely a household word even on his upstate New York turf. But Wilmot's otherwise unprepossessing office, in a cinder-block building at the edge of the Rochester airport, contains a profusion of photographs showing him with people in high places.

At 66, Wilmot is a hustling, self-made millionaire. Wearing one of his entrepreneurial hats, he is the principal owner of Wilmorite Inc., a Rochester construction and real estate firm. Elsewhere Wilmot is best known as the chairman and chief stockholder of Page Airways Inc.; it does a brisk business (1977 revenues: $59 million) operating terminals for private planes at nine busy locations, including Washington's National and Dulles airports. But what made Page special and Wilmot very rich was the firm's role as the worldwide sales agent for Grumman Corp.'s twin-jet Gulfstream II, at up to $7 million a model, the Cadillac of corporate aircraft.

Under an arrangement with Grumman made in 1970, Page was paid a $30,000 commission for every plane sold, even if Grumman itself did the selling. Now Page has lost this deal, and a scandal has plunged Wilmot's businesses into legal troubles, including grand jury investigations, in Washington and Rochester and charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission of illegal payoffs.

Wilmot's woes started in 1973, when a small Texas outfit that installs navigation and communications systems in Gulfstreams accused Page of trying to take over its lucrative business by, among other tactics, bribing one of its executives with $30,000 and the use of a Jaguar sports car. Last October Page was ordered by a U.S. court to pay the Texas firm $9 million in damages for trying to monopolize the Gulfstream outfitting business. Page is appealing that decision, but testimony at the trial about other Page activities has led to more trouble for Wilmot.

In April the SEC charged Page with making sham deals overseas to hide various payoffs in connection with the sale of four Gulfstreams to Saudi Arabian Airlines between 1975 and 1977 and the 1975 sale of a Gulfstream to Morocco. The total unaccounted-for funds, says the commission: $5 million.

The SEC also charged that since 1971 Page executives have made other questionable payments of more than $2.5 million in connection with $60 million in aircraft sales abroad, mostly involving Gulfstreams. According to the SEC, Page gave $200,000 to President Albert-Bernard ("Omar") Bongo of Gabon; paid $412,000 to an organization whose secretary was Timothee Ahoua, Ivory Coast Ambassador to the U.S.; passed $900,000 to an outfit controlled by Datuk Harris Salleh, at that time Minister of Industrial Development of the Malaysian state of Sabah; and gave a Cadillac convertible to Uganda's dictator, Idi Amin Dada.

Amin has been a fond Page customer since 1973. That year a Page vice president sold Amin a Gulfstream after giving him a lift from Uganda to a meeting of Third World leaders in Algiers. Page subsequently sold Amin a Lockheed cargo plane and furnished crews for it. When Amin wanted to buy medical supplies and seed wheat, Page executives rounded them up from U.S. suppliers. Amin gave Wilmorite the contract to build Uganda's new $5 million U.N. mission in Manhattan. Only after Congress began investigating U.S. suppliers selling equipment to Uganda about a year ago did Page break its aircraft service contract with Amin.

Wilmot insists that the SEC charges are without merit and dismisses criticism about dealing with Amin. Says he: "You don't have to believe in a man's political philosophy to do business with him."

Jim Wilmot, reports TIME New York Correspondent Robert Parker, has always known how to mix business and politics. Son of an Irish immigrant tailor, Wilmot left high school to help support his family and, by 21, was deeply involved in Rochester's Democratic politics. Through political connections, he got a job as assistant manager of the city's airport. He took flying lessons from Elmer Page, a local instructor, and in 1939 joined him and three other men to form Page Airways, which operated a flying school and charter service. It began with two Piper Cubs, a Waco biplane and a desk borrowed from a Democratic ward office.

As he prospered, Wilmot became an important Democratic Party fund raiser. He has entertained New York Governor Hugh Carey and Robert Kennedy in his Rochester home. After his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1968, Hubert Humphrey relaxed at Wilmot's 400-acre hunting reserve at Mendon, N.Y. Wilmot, his friends and associates contributed large sums to the 1974 reelection campaign of Senator Daniel Inouye, member of the Senate Aviation Subcommittee, and in 1976 to a fund set up by House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, then majority leader, for the campaigns of Democratic Congressmen.

Wilmot helped organize Democratic fundraising dinners in the mid-1970s, when Robert Strauss headed the Democratic National Committee and funneled legal work on his aviation and real estate interests to Strauss's Dallas law firm. When Strauss left the board of Columbia Pictures to join the Carter Administration last year, Wilmot took Strauss's seat.

Although it could be many months before the SEC's charges come to trial, Wilmot's days as a highflyer in international aviation seem over. Last month Grumman sold its Gulfstream-manufacturing subsidiary to American Jet Industries, of Van Nuys, Calif. Its president, Allen Paulson, says flatly that Page will not be asked to help sell any more Gulfstreams.

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