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>In Venezuela, Alberto Flores, No. 2 man in the country's delegation to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, resigned his post in order "to be free to defend himself." He is suspected of being among seven officials who allegedly accepted a bribe from Occidental Petroleum Co. in return for drilling concessions.
The climate of suspicion is making it more difficult for U.S. firms to do business abroad. Lockheed's new chairman, Robert W. Haack, hastily flew to Ottawa last week to reassure Canadian officials that no bribes have been involved in Lockheed's efforts to win a $950 million contract for 18 Orion antisubmarine planes. Nonetheless, the Canadian government indicated it would take its time signing the deal, largely because of doubts about the company's ability to survive the spreading scandal. The U.S. Senate passed, 60 to 30, a bill greatly tightening Government controls on overseas sales of American weapons. Among other things, the bill would force companies to report all agents' fees on arms sales, however small.
Personal Delivery? Critics of scandal-tainted corporations have been demanding management changes, and two companies responded last week—in diametrically opposed ways. In an astonishing display of corporate arrogance, Northrop Co. reinstated Thomas V. Jones as chairman. Jones had been both chairman and president when Northrop paid $30 million to agents and officials abroad and made illegal political contributions in the U.S.; he resigned as chairman last year after Northrop's executive committee said he bore a heavy responsibility for those acts.
In refreshing contrast, Phillips Petroleum agreed, in a court-approved settlement of stockholder lawsuits, to give outside directors 60% of the seats on an expanded board (they fill nine of 17 seats now) and empower them with responsibility for preventing a recurrence of past misdeeds. One charge contained in the settlement documents: Richard Nixon in 1968 "personally" received an illegal $50,000 campaign contribution from Phillips in his Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan.