I better explain here what my new job involved. At that time, and up until the nineteen-seventies, international airlines were exempt from antitrust laws and met regularly to decide what fares to charge. For example, if both a French (Air France) and an American (Pan Am and/or TWA) airlines carried passengers and cargo between the two countries — New York to Paris round trip, say — they were contractually obliged to charge the same fare, or tariff as we called them. The rationale for this was that if airlines were free to compete with tariffs, they would lose money and therefore pay less attention to safety. In fact, there was competition. By means of service, food, frequencies, efficiency — but not fares (or tariffs). However, some airlines granted discounts for competitive reasons. Take for example KLM, the Dutch airline. A lot of people fly to Amsterdam, but not nearly as many as fly to Paris, New York or London. So, KLM (a quality airline) finds itself needing an additional competitive advantage if they wish to transport passengers beyond Amsterdam: price. Argentina, for example, has a large Jewish community, most of whom would dearly like to travel to Israel, if they could afford it. There were no direct flights from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv, but you could get there via Madrid (Iberia), Paris (Air France), Rome (Alitalia), Zurich (Swissair) and Amsterdam (KLM). The fare was the same. Those days Lufthansa, although they flew to Buenos Aires, had difficulty convincing Argentine Jews to fly with them. Memory of the holocaust was still fresh, although the Lufthansa employees and management were of a later generation. But KLM, with an Argentinian Jewish sales manager, decided to concentrate on flying as many members of the Jewish community to Israel as possible. In order to accomplish this, they resorted to “illegal” discounts. On the other hand, Argentine Airlines (not a quality airline) was to a large extent dependent on giving discounts to everyone going everywhere.

My mission, as a “compliance Officer,” was to clean up the market. That is, to stop the discounts. In order to do so, I first had to prove that a particular airline had given one. How did I know? Complaints. If the Spanish airline Iberia, for example, knew that Argentine Airlines (or any other competitor) was giving discounts to Madrid, the manager would complain to the Compliance Officer (me) and I would try to obtain evidence of said discounts, usually by buying a “test ticket.” I couldn't very well buy the ticket myself because I was well known as the “IATA inspector.” So, I employed Argentine nationals as “intermediaries.”

My first case was on the flight we took when I was transferred from New York to Buenos Aires. It was on a DC6 that stopped in Miami, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Montevideo before arriving in Buenos Aires with its tongue hanging out. Traveling economy class on Varig airlines (a quality airline later a victim of deregulation), the stewardess ("flight attendant" now) gave my three-year-old daughter a teddy bear (forbidden: economy class passengers could not be given free gifts) and my wife and me free alcoholic drinks (forbidden). After finally arriving in Buenos Aires, I filed a violation report against Varig because of the free gin tonics, which cost them a $3,000 fine. I assuaged my conscience a little by not mentioning the free teddy-bear.

(By the way, around 1980 the U.S. CAB prohibited U.S. airlines from participating in IATA fare conferences, claiming they were violating anti-trust laws. Well, they were, but the solution — open skies and fares — has resulted in a war of all (airlines) against all and the disappearance of many of them, mostly American ones: Pan Am, Pan Air, Eastern, TWA, etc. Swissair, possibly the best of all in service, efficiency and security, also went bankrupt and bit the dust. Many European Airlines, although they seem to be still existent, were bought by bigger guys and only the name was retained. Iberia is really British Airways now, KLM is Air France, Austrian is Lufthansa, and so on.

Buenos Aires

My predecessor in Argentina, Jeff Van Dulken (known as Van), had left me a local assistant, Osvaldo Romberg. “His face is like warmed-over vomit, but he's hard as nails, used to be an Israeli paratrooper,” Van assured me. Well, Osvaldo turned out not to have the described face, which was quite normal, nor was he hard as nails; he was more like the pudgy teddy-bear Varig had given us. When he picked us up at the airport we got on the long immigration line, but Osvaldo said to follow him to the immigration official's desk, where he showed his IATA ID and spoke to the official, pointing to us. The official answered with a smile, and we followed Osvaldo back to the end of the line. “What did he say?” I asked. “He says: Get back to da end of da fuckin' line.” There's more about Osvaldo, but it would mean digressing, so I'll get to my first real case.

Van Dulken had purchased a test-ticket to Israel with a 20% discount from a travel agent in Buenos Aires. Two things must be explained here. Travel agents earned only 7% commission, so the discount must have been given by the airline. As mentioned above, Argentina had and has one of the world's largest Jewish populations after Israel, so the European airlines fought tooth and nail for the Jewish market, because the only way to Israel was via Europe. Van Dulken, who had been promoted to prosecutor in IATA's private court in New York, had purchased the discounted ticket through a paid intermediary. He had presented the test ticket to KLM's sales manager, requesting his explanation. By the time KLM presented their defense Van Dulken was already back in New York, so I had to take over the post-investigation. KLM claimed that the discount was really a subsidy given by a synagogue wishing to promote Argentine Jewish Youth's travel to Israel. It was backed up by a letter from the synagogue stating that it had indeed granted the subsidy, as well as by the manager of the Argentine branch of the Jewish Agency confirming that defense. Van Dulken sent the written defense to me for the “post-investigation.” I hadn't been in Argentina more than two weeks when KLM's defense arrived by snail-mail, the only kind back then.

The intermediary, Bernardo, turned out to be Osvaldo's friend, so I told him to contact Bernardo and have him tell the truth, that he never received a subsidy from anyone. Osvaldo tried, but Bernado's mother told him that her son didn't want to talk to him and neither did she, ever again. It looked like Bernardo was under pressure from the travel agent, the Jewish Agency, the airline, or all three, so I decided to check out the synagogue. (I later found out that Bernardo received a free ride on KLM to Israel and back, although I don't know if he ever came back.)

The synagogue was in a working-class neighborhood and one look at the shabby building convinced me that it was in no condition to subsidize Bernardo or even itself. The rabbi was a thin elderly gentleman in a shiny black suit. He received us, Osvaldo and me, courteously, but with a certain awareness in his eyes. The rabbi was an immigrant himself, so his Spanish was shaky. Osvaldo had accompanied me as an interpreter, although his interpreting skill was dubious (he had told me he’d learned English listening to Dizzy Gillespie). And when I tried to explain to the rabbi the situation through Osvaldo, it was soon obvious that they weren't understanding each other very well.

From his accent, I figured he was from Poland or Russia, so I tried my rusty Russian, but he only shrugged. Then I tried German, to which he answered with a Yiddish accent.

Osvaldo dozed in a corner as the rabbi and I began the small talk. How I'd learned Russian and German in the U.S. army, that I was an American, which helped a lot those days, etc. He had a cousin who'd been wise enough to immigrate to Brooklyn instead of Buenos Aires and asked if I knew him, which caused me to smile. Did he realize how many Jews there were in Brooklyn? I told him, and that many of them were my old friends. It was true. I was from a Catholic minority surrounded by Jewish kids. I had been invited to bar mitzvahs, even knew a little Yiddish — mostly curse words.

After we'd warmed to each other I told him why I was there. He laughed outright. I showed him “his” letter confirming the subsidy. He stopped smiling. This is a forgery, he said angrily. The signature was a scrawl and wasn't his. I asked if he would put that in writing. That was too much. “I don't want trouble,” he said in Russian, possibly to emphasize it: Я не хочу проблем, which was understandable because Argentina was ruled by a relatively benign military dictatorship and the country was alive with Nazi war criminals who'd found a haven.

Suddenly he snapped his fingers and held up the letter. “This paper was ours, but we no longer use it. When we ran out last year, we had another design made.” He opened a drawer and took out a blank page of stationery. “This is what we have been using for the past three years.”

“May I have this?” I asked.

“Yes, you may, but please don't use my name.”

I promised I wouldn't. In the affidavit I swore at the American consulate I called him "the rabbi.”

I went to the IATA trial in New York. KLM's lawyer said that if the subsidy was not granted by the synagogue, it must have come from some other source, because KLM did not give discounts. The judge, a retired airline executive who knew the ropes, fined the airline $25,000, which was a lot of money in those days, and said he regretted that it was the maximum allowed him.

I stayed with IATA for the rest of my airline career. When airline deregulation came into effect and the discounts that were once sins became virtues, my division morphed into “Tariff Integrity,” which meant no fines and didn't really work, and finally “Fraud Prevention,” which was real and necessary.

After twelve years in Argentina, much longer than usual, I was transferred to Switzerland, then Germany, then back to Switzerland and, finally back to Argentina in 1986 until I retired in 1998 when I was manager for Fraud Prevention — Latin America. Osvaldo eventually emigrated to Israel, where he became a renowned artist and university professor.

But now back to my original posting in Buenos Aires — and this memoir gets interesting.