{"id":19782,"date":"2017-10-19T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/awards-for-sale\/"},"modified":"2019-09-06T22:39:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T20:39:29","slug":"awards-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/awards-for-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Awards for Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a Monday in mid-September, around noon, when the email arrived.

Headlined \u201cThe Majestic Falcon Award for Quality & Excellence VIDEO\u201d, it addressed me as \u201cDear Awardee,\u201d and invited me to come and pick up my award at the November ceremony in Dubai.

I wrote back expressing my gratitude and asked them to confirm me as a recipient. I also inquired about costs and other organizational details. Three days later, I got a reply.

This time, the lengthy and very generic note referred to me as the representative of a \u201ccompany\u201d and revealed that the award was coming not with prize money but with a hefty price tag.

The \u20ac4,750 in \u201cparticipation fees\u201d would cover the right to reproduce the award materials, two nights in a hotel, two invitations to a cocktail party and a gala dinner including an award ceremony as well as costs of photos and video of the event sent via DHL. In addition, I would also have to pay for my own visa and plane ticket.

Just \u20ac4,750, and voila, I could add this bombastic-sounding award to my CV.

It is not hard to imagine that news of winning an international award with a fancy name would put a smile on the faces of many people. But I had a different reason to laugh. Three years ago, I investigated a number of organizations which hand out dozens of bogus awards \u2013 if you pay.

Otherways<\/em>, which sent me the email, was one of them.<\/p>

 <\/p>

\u201cThe organizations all find new nominees in the same manner. They say they research and choose the best, but in reality in most cases they send out hundreds of email invitations … Anyone who replies, shows interest and agrees to pay gets an award,\u201d read the story I wrote with\u00a0Dragana Peco<\/strong> for OCCRP\/CINS.<\/p>

 <\/p>

E-mail from Otherways<\/h2>

\"\"<\/p>

 <\/p><\/div>


\u201cLet\u2019s see how much they make with this,\u201d I thought, and contacted the hotel in Dubai and DHL.

A double room for two nights, Nov. 26 and 27, at the JW Marriott Marquis<\/em> Hotel cost \u20ac931 according to the email the hotel sent me. The same room can be booked for about \u20ac700 on booking websites.

The DHL shipment would cost between \u20ac90 and \u20ac115, depending on whether something is sent to Belgrade from Dubai or from Paris, where Otherways<\/em> is based.

That leaves about \u20ac3,700 to cover the award ceremony, participation costs and award materials rights.

Three years ago, when I contacted Otherways<\/em> as a journalist, they wrote that their criteria for choosing awardees are strict, and not just anyone who offers money will be honored: \u201cWe do not sell potatoes.\u201d Still, they noted that organizing an event requires high expenditures and since they do not have sponsors, they are forced to levy \u201chumble participation fees.\u201d<\/p>


Nothing has changed<\/h2>

\u00a0<\/h2>

The full name of the organization which contacted me on Sept. 11, 2017, is Otherways<\/em> Management Association Club (OMAC). Their website does not reveal a lot of information, not even the list of all previous winners.

The \u201cCompany\u201d section previously contained information on how Otherways<\/em> was founded by Charbel S. Tabet<\/strong> \u201c18 years ago\u201d \u2013 which would be 21 years ago now.

However, that information was removed from the website after OCCRP\/CINS published the story in October 2014. At the time, their website also stated that in 18 years they had given out 2,635 awards, an average of 146 per year. Nevertheless, in a 2015 ceremony video, they say it is their 15th anniversary. The overall number of awards stated on the website now is 2,135.

Tabet usually personally hands out awards at ceremonies. In the past, he was a consultant of a similar organization, the Global Trade Leaders\u2019 Club<\/em> (GTLC).

As a director and founder of the company Foodica Best Foods<\/em>, he received a GTLC award in 1994.<\/p>


The company later received awards from Otherways<\/em> as well. In other words, two organizations he represented made an award to a third he headed.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>


Besides Otherways<\/em> and GTLC, OCCRP\/CINS identified four more organizations selling vanity awards:
\u2022 The Europe Business Assembly
\u2022 The Business Initiative Directions
\u2022 Actualidad Magazine
\u2022 The European Society for Quality Research.<\/em>

They all sold more than 250 awards to individuals, institutions and public and private companies in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2000.

Reporters for CINS\/OCCRP could find no evidence of competitions, judging, or even set criteria used to determine the winners, most of whom originated from Africa, Asia, South America and Southeastern Europe. The pattern appears to be that anyone who pays enough money can win an award.

It seems that not much has changed since we wrote the article, except I was now personally invited to join laureates of similar awards like Ibrahim Jusufranic, who received several bogus awards, including the Actualidad in 2004 on behalf of Sarajevo\u2019s city transportation company, which he ran at a time when it reported tens of millions in losses. He was later arrested for embezzlement of company funds and the trial is ongoing.

Or, perhaps, like the Serbian state-owned pharmaceutical company Galenika, which was honored in 2009, but later became the subject of an investigation and prosecution. Two trials are ongoing against former managers of the company, who were indicted on charges of multi-million embezzlements.

Who wouldn\u2019t want that?

So, pretending to be an interested potential recipient, I asked Otherways<\/em> to tell me more about the award they were offering in September. Their reply stated that they conduct \u201c8 different conventions and awards in 2 years\u2019 time in London, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Rome, New York, Dubai\u201d while the award is \u201ca communication tool serving the interests of the companies\u201d as they make their firms known in a multi-sector forum, exchange experiences and find out about new technologies and markets.

The longest segment of their email was about how they choose the winners. \u201cThe selection criteria for the Quality Summit are based on information, polls and voting,\u201d they said, adding that the final decision is made by \u201cthe Majestic Falcon Award for Quality & Excellence selection\u2019s committee.\u201d

Among others, they wrote: \u201cThe Majestic Falcon Award for Quality & Excellence is presented to each Company as entity, for corporate achievement, to recognize prestige, Innovation, Quality & Technology. For this purpose, a voting process is carried out by mail, Internet or within awarded companies, based on one several of the following concepts: Customer Satisfaction, Leadership, Continuing Education and Trading, Business Results, ISO 9001- 14001-22000, TQM and TQCS (Top Quality Customer Satisfaction Standards.)\u201d

So that\u2019s how they chose me.

They evaluated the satisfaction of my customers, my leadership skills, my continuing education and trading as well as my business results.

At this point I would like to remind the reader again of the fact that I am a journalist who helped expose bogus awards, including the one Otherwise was proposing to give me.

So after telling me that they carefully reviewed all those details about me, the next phase in the process of getting the award would be for me to fill in the registration form, which requires basic information about the awardee and 300 words on my \u201cOrganization\u2019s activities, background history and achievements.\u201d

Many do decide to accept the honor, including public institutions, which mean that some of them pay the fees with taxpayers\u2019 money.

Three years ago, CINS\/OCCRP identified 15 awardees from Bosnia and Serbia honored by Otherways<\/em>, including state-run Belgrade Pharmacy<\/em>, Belgrade Power Plants<\/em>, BH Telecom<\/em> and Sarajevo Center Municipality\u2014which got four Otherways<\/em> awards.

\u201cOtherways<\/em> has experience and respect doing selections and promotion of successful company all around the world,\u201d someone wrote on the Otherways<\/em> website on behalf of state-owned Sarajevo-based BH Telecom<\/em>.

\u201cWe are witness for inauguration of our company [at the] Geneva \u201cnight\u201d where we had feel grateful for all this effort. We wish to you and Otherways<\/em> all the best in the future,\u201d the note added.
\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years after I investigated bogus international awards sold for thousands of euros \u2013 ta-dah! \u2013 I got invited to pick up mine, for just \u20ac4,750<\/p>\n

\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1139,"featured_media":16192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1582,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cross-border-crime","category-news","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1508324018~~sira,-valjda.JPG","author_additional":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22372,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19782\/revisions\/22372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}