Businessman Pulls Off Soviet Coup

Robert Lees arrived in Moscow a few weeks ago to do a little business and found himself in the middle of a coup.

Lees is president of Pacific InterTrade Corp., a Westlake Village company that helps American concerns set up complex trading deals in foreign countries. He traveled to the Soviet Union to arrange the export to a factory in Lithuania of U.S.-made equipment used in fabricating television picture tubes.

But on Aug. 20, Lees’ second day in Moscow, the executive saw tanks roll into Red Square and wondered if the changes that had opened the Soviet Union to Western business ventures had come to a grinding halt. He recalled his feeling of despair when, two years earlier, he had been in China as tanks crushed a democratic uprising in Tian An Men Square.

Surprisingly, Lees’ Soviet trip went rather well. Even during the few days when the coup plotters were in control and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s whereabouts were unknown, “business just continued to go,” Lees said.

Speaking to reporters Friday, the day after his return, Lees said that as protesters manned barricades around the Russian Parliament building, he was meeting with Soviet officials to discuss the TV-tube venture.

“On the one side, all this was going on,” he said. “On the other side, we were still continuing a dialogue and continuing to do business and continuing to meet with people.”

Lees’ American clients include RCA Corp., Corning Glass and small companies in Ohio and Pennsylvania that make the glass TV tubes.

On the Soviet end, Lees met with officials of the Moscow State Trading Corp., a governmental agency that helped arrange the financing and shipping. He also completed arrangements for a Ukrainian group to supply other raw materials to the facility in Lithuania, and for the finished picture tubes to be sent to the Ukraine, to be installed in cabinets.

Lees plans to sell the completed TV sets in Africa and Latin America.

Lees was also surprised to find that such basic services as street lights, water and restaurants continued operating during the coup. He was able to place calls to his wife back home. And he was most impressed by Moscow taxi drivers, who drove the wrong way down one-way streets and careened along sidewalks to get him through a city in upheaval.

Not that there weren’t some hitches along the way. The first load of TV equipment was scheduled to be shipped to the Soviet Union just as news of the coup reached the West. Because there were no guarantees that the equipment could be safely delivered, port authorities in Europe wouldn’t accept the shipment.

By Friday, the goods were back on their way to the Soviet Union, Lees said.

Lees and his 19-year-old son, Sean, who was along to sightsee, ran into trouble on a train bound from Moscow to Leningrad on the Wednesday after the coup. As they slept in their cabin, father and son were robbed of about $1,000 in cash and a Walkman cassette tape player.

In Leningrad the following morning, two City Council members helped the pair find an American Express office so they could replace their stolen money.

Shortly after his arrival back home, Lees received several faxes and telexes from his Soviet business partners, telling him that they remained committed to the TV-set venture, despite the possible breakup of the country.

Lees said he felt reassured by the messages. But, he added, “it was not my typical business trip.”