COLLEAGUES of former Qantas freight vice-president Bruce McCaffrey, 65, to be jailed eight months under terms of a plea bargain in the US price fixing scam, have accused the Australian flag carrier of leaving him "like a shag on a rock", reports The Australian newspaper.
"I say shame on Qantas," said Julian Keeling, proprietor of Consolidated International, a Los Angeles-based freight forwarding company specialising in the South Pacific and Australasia, and editor of a popular industry newsletter.
"You've got a guy like Bruce who's suffered a major stroke, who is not a well guy, who was at the office at 7am every morning and the last to leave at night, and who now, at age 65 and after 40 years in the cargo business, is going to jail. It's just disgusting. Qantas owes Bruce a debt."
Qantas said it would not comment while the case was before the courts. The plea bargain is subject to court approval.
Qantas pleaded guilty in January and was sentenced to pay a US$61 million-dollar criminal fine for engaging in a conspiracy to fix rates to customers in the United States and elsewhere for international air shipments, reported the Agence France-Presse news agency.
American-born and a Los Angeles-based McCaffrey was also fined US$20,000 after pleading guilty this week to fixing international air cargo rates, is believed to be the first player in the global scam to face jail, said The Australian.
The Los Angeles air cargo community where McCaffrey has been an aloof but respected fixture for the best part of 20 years, continues to held in regard.
They see McCaffrey as a determined, hard-working man who carries himself with the "solemnity of a funeral director and who has a sense of humour to match", said the newspaper.
Never married, McCaffrey is without extravagant tastes, has few if any close friends and suffers from poor health, the result of a severe stroke in the mid-1990s that left him with a limp, an arm that doesn't function properly, a hand that can't grip anything and a face paralysed down one side, said the newspaper.
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