Meeting Notes, May 23, 2017

President Tim Ridge called the meeting to order at 8:10. Brian Goode offered a blessing followed by the pledge of allegiance.  President Tim reminded everyone that there is NO MEETING next Tuesday morning.

 

He also thanked Maxine Parsons-Kogut for the great job she did heading up and organizing the Children's Center 50th Year Celebration.  There were more than 20 volunteers that participated.
 

The Children's Center celebrated 50 years on Saturday May 20 with a picnic, games and the ever popular VLR popcorn wagon.

 

To see more photos furnished by Ivan Bennett click here

 

 
Youth and Education - Ivan Bennett: he and several members attended the Exceeding Expectations graduation at the Jazz Corner on Monday night May 22. Thirty five young ladies and gentlemen, mostly eighth graders, in their finest dress enjoyed the ceremony and dinner.
Ivan also reported on Scholarships.  It is ideal to have four in school and gave a status of the last four. This year's recipient will be starting at USC - Columbia in fall; last year's, Weston is currently home and will be going back to Clemson, Natalie is majoring in graphic communications (they same as Weston) ; and Caroline will graduate.
This summer Ivan and Ray Makalous will try to reboot Rotary Reader for next year and have a meeting scheduled the beginning of June.

 

Campus Clean - up - Corey Malphrus -  no date has been set yet, but will probably be middle of June.

 

Port Royal Foundation event May 25th - John Farrenkopf - transportation will be leaving the field house at Hilton Head High School at 5:15.  

 

Founders Night - Brian Neumann - Will be held June 24th at Spring Lake Pavillion starting at 5:30

 

Sergeant-at-Arms, Jennifer DeHart introduced visiting Rotarians and guests.  There were no birthdays or anniversaries today.  She collected Happy Dollar$ and then turned the Rotary spotlight on member John Farrenkopf.  He is from Dayton Ohio and moved here in 2006.  He is the Lacross coach at Hilton Head High School.  Previous to moving here he was in banking.  He has been a VLR member since 2009.

 

VISITING ROTARIANS:
Ray Edstine - (Southhampton NY)
Jim Baden - (Hamilton, OH -being inducted today)
Richard Rorschach (Kilgore, TX)

 

GUEST:
Andre Naniche our speaker and guest of John Cunningham

 

 

Bruce Yeager inducts new member Jim Baden as sponsor Ivan Bennett looks on
 

Jim Baden addresses the membership.  If you have not met Jim yet, please make sure you do and welcome him to the VLR family.

 

Today's speaker, Andre Naniche, was introduced by John Cunningham. Mr. Naniche was born in Iran, raised in Berkeley California and graduated from University of California, Berkeley. He has lived and worked in many countries and retired here in 2009. He is fluent in Russian and French. His presentation today "Life, Business & Politics in Russia" focuses on the ten years he spent in Moscow.

 

During those ten years, he worked at three different companies. He compared them based on his own corruption scale (one being slightly corrupt to ten being totally corrupt). The third company, was a joint venture called TNK/BP. On a scale of one to ten he rated this at a twelve and gave several examples to make his point. The main example was during the selection of a Director of Logistics for the newly formed company. Andre presented his director as very capable and very qualified to do the job. Andre's counterpart, in presenting his candidate, stated that he could do everything Andre's candidate could do but he was also an expert in bribery. He explained that Russians grow up with the idea that corruption is normal and a way of life. There is an unwritten code that goes on - those that are "anointed" can get away with anything, while those that are not "anointed" will be punished. He pointed out that in the US we say you are innocent until proven guilty - and the opposite is true in Russia - you are guilty until proven innocent and not trust-worthy until proven differently.

In the Russian oil business there were many ex-pats because they were needed for the technology to get the oil out of the ground. It was also very expensive to maintain ex-pats, about two million each per year. However they were needed to ensure the success of the business. Mr. Naniche also explained that the incremental tax rate the Russians levied on oil over $27 per barrel was 97%!

Mr. Naniche told several other interesting stories highlighting the differences between Russian way of doing business and what we are accustomed to. He opened it up for questions and of course one questions was if he thought the Russians could be involved in some of the accusations that we have seen - to which he replied that nothing the Russians do would surprise him. To a question concerning dealing with Putin, he replied that Putin may be able to offer something and he would rather have him on his side. Quite an interesting presentation, putting a different perspective on the way we view dealings in and with Russia.