‘File 7/25 Complaints regarding sale of R.A.F. stores’ [‎17r] (35/78)

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of 2 P ! o only, T have twice asked the Deputy Disposals
Officer to give me details of the sales made so that T can
satisfy the Shaikh of Shar f 1ah if he later queries the
amount of duty collected. So far T have not received the
schedules, without knowing who has bought the goods the
Shaikh is himself unable to collect the additional 10^
from outsiders while they are still here; and I fear this
will later lead-to claims through us because the Deputy
Disposals Officer originally offered to collect the duty
and later confirmed that he would do so. Copies of my
letters Nos. 308.0430 and 354.0450 dated the 16th and 24th
Tarch respectively to the Deputy Disposals Officer and his
replies are enclosed. It is requested that the question
of the release of the duty collected on the vehicles may
be taken up with Air Headquarters now.
6. To conclude 1 my own view of the affair is that
the vehicles were sold to Muhammad al Chirawi of Bahrain
acting on behalf of Yusuf Ubaidli - perhaps because the
latter is suspect or has been blacklisted - before they
were ever shown to the Shaikhs, who would not have been
allowed to see them at all had I not specifically asked the
Deputy Disposals Officer to show them to them when he called
to protest on behalf of TJbaidli against a duty of 12^ to
be collected from outsiders. HJverything possible was then
done to discourage the Shaikhs from bidding in a sale that
had, T believe, already been concluded. I should be the
last to suggest that the Shaikh of Sharjah would not try
to confine the sales to his own buyers if he could; but in
this case competition from Dubai and Bahrain effectively
prevented him from doing so. The restrictions on free
bidding appear to me rather to have arisen from an
arrangement between the Deputy Disposals Officer and the
two buyers who accompanied him from Bahrain.
IA a ^
Political Officer,Trueial Coast
Sharjah.