Prime Minister’s chief of staff plays on public ignorance of how official distributorships work
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, has told The Malta Independent that Crane Currency will not be buying its banknote printing machines from his company, even though it is the official distributor for Komori, which makes the machines that Crane Currency will buy.
“Having knowledge of the industry, I can confirm that currency printing machinery requires strict security features and specifications and therefore such machinery is not acquired through third parties but directly from the manufacturer,” he told the newspaper in a written statement.
Schembri plays on public ignorance of how official distributorships work. He’s not going to play that game with me, because I have known since the age of around six how official distributorships work, thanks to the kind of extended family in which I grew up. Official distributors of large-scale, capital-investment equipment don’t hold stock. You can’t turn up at the official distributorship of production machinery, tell them what you want, and have them pull your requirements out of the warehouse for delivery that afternoon. That’s not how it works.
The official distributorship is the manufacturing company’s representative in the location. Even if it handles your order and receives payment for the machinery, that machinery is not going to come out of its warehouse but will be shipped straight from the manufacturer.
Schembri wishes to suggest here that his company will not be processing the orders or receiving payment from Crane Currency for the bank-note-printing machines which the company will buy from Komori, even though the Prime Minister’s chief of staff’s outfit is the official distributor for Komori. That is completely irrelevant. Under an official distributorship agreement of this nature, the official distributor takes a percentage commission off every sale its principals (the manufacturer) make in its official distributorship territory.
The commission varies according to the nature of the product and the sums involved, but it comes into force because otherwise there would be no point in a manufacturer building relationships with official distributors, or the official distributor working to build sales, if the manufacturer is then going to undermine the official distributor by allowing customers to go straight to its plant and cut out the broker.
Keith Schembri is lying – just as he lied about his companies in Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar and Cyprus, his trust in New Zealand, and his involvement with the shady (then) managing director of Allied Newspapers and Progress Press.
Which reminds me: when Adrian Hillman bought millions of euros worth of printing machinery and other capital goods on behalf of his employer, from Keith Schembri, Schembri didn’t pull them out of his warehouse (“Here’s one I made earlier.”). They were shipped from the manufacturer and Schembri took the commission – as did, no doubt, Hillman.
