Jack Dyer Crouch Lost in Statements

The statements of the USA ambassador regarding a "war" between a foreign company of the food and beverage industry and a Romanian company seem to have no valid grounds. The RRW (Romanian Railways) and Metrorex say that there have never been this kind of incidents in the train and subway stations.

The statement made two days ago by the USA ambassador in Bucharest, Jack Dyer Crouch, regarding a "war" between a foreign company of the food and beverage industry and a Romanian company seems to have no valid grounds. The ambassador stated that the companies don’t want to compete on a hostile market, where they will always be losing, and he referred to a foreign company that had some problems in Romania. "The vending machines of the investor have been repeatedly vandalized and taken out of the stations, and the sellers have been threatened", Crouch said.

NO SUCH CASES RECORDED The leading board of the National Company of the Romanian Railways doesn’t know anything about such incidents. "There are no vending machines in the train stations. There are only stalls that have storing refrigerators for the beverages, and they take their merchandise from the suppliers", the RRW Image Promotion Bureau stated. In the North train station in Bucharest, for example, the stalls that sell beverages have special refrigerators that are owned by the following companies: Coca-Cola, European Drinks and Bucovina. In its turn, the administration board of the North train station says that there haven’t been recorded any cases like the ones Mr. Cruch was talking about.

NO COMMENT Coca-Cola, the only great foreign producer that has refrigerators for storing beverages in the train stations, also has vending machines, but only in the subway stations. "We haven’t received any such complaints. In our stations there are only Coca-Cola vending machines and coffee machines owned by a foreign company", Marius Lepadat, the general director of Metrorex, stated. If Coca-Cola is the company Mr. Crouch was referring to, then there are no proofs leading to this target. "We have no comments to make regarding the statement that His Excellency, Mr. Ambassador J.D. Crouch, made today (Thursday - n. e.). As far as we are concerned, we support the files already made public by the Council of the Foreign Investors and by the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce. These two institutions have repeatedly expressed valid opinions regarding the Romanian business environment", Mugur Radulescu, PR director of Coca-Cola HBC Romania, stated.

CONFUSION In his statement, the USA ambassador stated that the "vending machines (…) have been repeatedly vandalized, taken out of the train stations, and the sellers have been threatened". His statements are contradictory, because the vending machines work independently, without any sellers assisting them. If this situation really existed, it looks like the ambassador would misplace them, because there weren’t such incidents in the train stations, or in the subway stations.