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According to BANKO’s source of information, this weekend (15 and 16th of October) the office of ‘Premier Travel Service’ was virtually emptied from office equipment. Presumably, a part of it was taken by the company staff to compensate for unextinguished salary. Officially, this information could not be confirmed or refuted by representatives of the company, as the senior management was not available: both landline and mobile phones were not answered. Meantime, Olga Rybina, the executive director of ‘Premier’, left a comment in Kurilka forum on www.tourdom.ru under ‘Fishka’ nickname. However the comment was not concrete so it did not clear up the situation.
Meanwhile, Gennadiy Kucha, a correspondent of BANKO team who visited the operator’s office (see ‘Premier’ has fallen through – part 4’) in the office building on Zemlyanoy val, reports:
‘According to one of the guards, on Saturday there were managers of ‘Premier’ in the office, but senior management was nowhere to see. In the morning on the 17th of October agents of the operator would come to the office but leave with nothing. I met two representatives from agencies myself. They refused to officially introduce themselves as the financial problems are not yet solved with ‘Premier’, but they said they had to pay for tourists out of their own pockets. Both agents said they also came to the operator’s office on Saturday but managers refused to consider their complaints, explaining that this issue will be dealt with by the senior management which would appear in a day or two. Today, the representatives of travel firms submitted complaints to central Department of internal affairs of Moscow.’
At the same time on the 17th of October, BANKO received a phone call from Mikhail Farbr, the director of ‘Arpha’ agency. He told us that on Friday the 14th, ‘Premier’ couriers came to the office and collected $1,000 for two tourists who were supposed to fly to Monastir on the 20th of October. We can assume that ‘Premier’s collapse was a bolt from the blue even for the staff of the company who continued working as before. Now the director of ‘Arpha’ is going to pay the same amount to ‘Capital Tour’ company, so that the misfortune does not affect his clients. What is more, Mikhail Farbr also intends to submit his complaint to militia.
The investigation of BANKO team will be continued, comments of the market players will be published in the next issue.
