There is a major mystery surrounding the death of Chris Cramer, an employee of Kollsman Inc., a US subsidiary of Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE: ESLT).
The authorities in the Saudi city of Tabuk claim that Cramer committed suicide, after falling from his hotel window on the third floor of the Sahara Makarim Hotel. However, his family and friends in the US insist that he was murdered as part of a complicated arms deal, reports "Fox News."
Family attorney and longtime friend of the victim Noah Mandell told "FoxNews," “The problem was with the customer. The missile system was already sold to the Saudi company and they were complaining that it wasn’t working. He was basically sent to see if he could prove that they were firing it incorrectly.”
Mandell also said he believes that the Tow Missile system was sabotaged before Cramer arrived with a colleague in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 8. “When Chris showed up everything was inoperable,” he said.
Kollsman spokesman Clark Friese told "FoxNews," “They showed up, they helped put it together and the demonstrations went without a hitch. Everything was operating and fully functional. Chris had even posted a video of one of the missile firings.”
"Fox News" added, text messages Cramer sent to family members from Saudi Arabia indicated some of the prior equipment could have been in poor condition.
“We fired 6 missiles with one near miss,” he said in a message to his nephew. “Their M109s are old and full of problems.”
“Lol easy fix or gonna take some time,” Cramer’s nephew, Christopher Arsenault, replied.
“They want to check out firing some of the new tow 2A RF link aeros and some extended range tow. I'll be shooting them till Thursday and if they like the performance of our stuff, we're gonna get an order for a ton of upgrades,” Cramer texted back.
Mandell also theorized that the company that bought the TOW system, Saudi-based Global Defense Systems wanted the equipment to malfunction so they could recoup some of their money they spent on the system.
Elbit Systems said, "We received notification from Elbit's US subsidiary Kollsman that a company employee Chris Cramer died during a work trip. The circumstances of his death are being checked out by the US State Department. We do not have any further details at this stage and we are waiting for the State Department to update our US subsidiary. Cramer worked for the company for 12 years. We cannot provide details about the project on which he was working but we are talking about a longstanding Kollsman product that does not have any Israeli technology."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 1, 2015
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