Who’d run a national phone company these days? While Iain Vallence just gets flak atop British Telecommunications Plc, he can ruefully reflect that he’s better off than his counterparts in Japan and Greece: a few weeks back, retiring Nippon Telegraph & Telephone chairman Hisashi Shinto was arrested on bribery harges in connection with the Recruit Cosmos scandal, and last week, Theophonis Tobras, director general of Greece’s state controlled Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation was arrested on fraud charges in connection with the Koskotas banking scandal, and the phone company is the third state corporation to be accused of misusing cash to prop up the bank.
