Kardashian’s DASH Store Plagiarized in Beirut

What first began as a twitpic from CHRBL of a billboard in Dora has made its way to Kim Kardashian, founder of DASH shops in the US:

Starcasm.net: PHOTO Are the Kardashians opening a DASH store in Beirut?

This photo taken in the Beirut suburb of Dora, Lebanon was originally tweeted by @CHRBL and eventually found its way to Kim Kardashian via @Zoozel with the following question: “@KimKardashian me and my friends need to settle this. Do you have a DASH branch in Beirut or not?”

And Kim responded through her blog:

One of my Twitter followers, Zoozel, sent me this pic asking whether there is a DASH store in Beirut. No, there is no DASH boutique in Beirut!
It looks like someone has just used the same font we use for the boutique to advertise their company. We have no idea what this is, lol.

A complete FAIL to Naji Saleh & Sons.

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Kia Leads in New Car Sales and Dangerous Websites

In the first 7 months of the year, 19,639 new cars were sold in Lebanon according to the Association of Automobile Importers with the Koreans leading the way:

• Kia: 18.5%
• Hyundai: 11.9%
• Nissan: 16.5%
• Toyota: 8.3%
• Mitsubishi: 4.4%

Its quite clear from the top five list that Lebanese know how to choose value-for-money cars. Unfortunately though, Kia Lebanon apparently cannot choose a value-for-money webmaster. According to Google, their website may harm my computer. Mozilla Firefox is also quite adamant that I avoid the site at all cost.

Screen shot: What I saw when I tried visiting the Kia Lebanon website via Firefox.

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Spinneys CEO Saves Beirut Store from Watery Grave

There is no time frame mentioned for this anecdote but Spinneys Group CEO, Michael Wright,  brought it up in an interview with Arabian Business:

It’s three o’clock in the morning, and a freak rainstorm is in danger of washing a Beirut supermarket — and its contents — down the street and into the Mediterranean. Flood water is overwhelming the pumps, and in a matter of minutes the basement level of the store will be more akin to a reservoir than a retail outlet. Panicked staff and watchmen agree on one thing: it’s time to call the boss.

“I got a call and rushed down; it was chaos,” recalls Michael Wright, smiling at the memory. “The whole store was in danger of floating down the street if we didn’t get another pump working. I took a jackhammer, and smashed straight though the floor in the middle of the store, to make a hole so we could put an extra pump in. I guess you could call it micromanaging, but then who else but the boss would be prepared to jackhammer through the middle of a $12m shop?”

Who knew? Thankfully, that has not discouraged Spinneys from further investments in the country:

…further down the line, the retailer is examining the feasibility of offering online shopping in Lebanon.

“So many have tried around the world, and so many have failed,” Wright cautions. “You have to be very specific and you can only manage it in small communities where it can be really worthwhile.

“We believe we can do it when we have a few more stores in certain areas — Beirut, for example – but it’s probably two years down the road,” he continues. “It will be very localised, and taken store by store.”

But of course, there is the well-known and publicized problem in Lebanon:

According to Wright the relatively slow speed of the internet in Lebanon, coupled with the fact that “trying to find a house in the first place can be a nightmare in this part of the world”, means online shopping will never form a significant component of the Spinneys Group business model.

Nice to see a CEO that is willing to get his hands dirty with a little DIY work, though.

Arabian Business: The market forces behind Spinneys Group

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HSBC Databank Breach Detailed – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has detailed the accounts behind the HSBC client data breach that I had mentioned back in March.

Four months ago, it was reported that a large number of high net-worth client details were stolen from HSBC’s Private Bank in Switzerland by a former employee who tried to sell the information to a Lebanese bank. The WSJ has all the details now including the banks in Lebanon that were approached as well as a Lebanese accomplice:

HSBC officials allege that Mr. [Hervé] Falciani copied thousands of files of wealthy clients of its Swiss private-banking arm. Swiss authorities are investigating whether Mr. Falciani, 38 years old, stole bank records and violated banking secrecy laws.

[...]

Mr. Falciani says he alerted his bosses at HSBC in 2006 about flaws in data storage that could affect client confidentiality, but no one listened. HSBC officials said they found no such warnings by Mr. Falciani.

Around that time, Ms. [Georgina] Mikhael, an HSBC colleague, entered the picture. A Franco-Lebanese computer programmer, she joined HSBC in Geneva on a temporary contract in 2006, but had no access to sensitive data, the company says. Soon after arriving at the bank, Ms. Mikhael and the married Mr. Falciani began a romantic relationship, which has since ended, according to their respective lawyers.

[...]

In February 2008, Mr. Falciani and Ms. Mikhael flew to Lebanon, where according to their lawyers they met Beirut representatives of five banks: BNP Paribas, Société Générale de Banque au Liban, Blom Bank, Audi Bank and Byblos Bank.

According to officials at the banks familiar with the meetings, Mr. Falciani, who was still employed by HSBC, introduced himself as Ruben Al-Chidiack and made a short marketing pitch. He evaded questions about how he obtained the data he offered to sell, these people said.

[...]

One of the Beirut bank branches that Mr. Falciani and Ms. Mikhael visited posted an alert of suspicious activities on a website managed by the Swiss Bankers Association. The notice said someone had been trying to sell “data on clients of various Swiss banks.”Swiss Federal Police, who monitor the site, opened a probe and soon homed in on Ms. Mikhael, who had traveled to Lebanon using her real identity.

All you need is a few action scenes, and you’ve got yourself a pretty good movie. You can read the plot in its entirety here.

Hervé Falciani, a former employee of HSBC, is at the center of a dispute between France and Switzerland over bank data. AFP/Getty Images

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Lebanon to be on Par with Finland

Can you believe it! Lebanon and Finland are going to have something in common. The land of a thousand lakes which is ranked within the top ten countries in the Global Peace Index and the Corruption Perception Index, as well as within the top 15 in the UN’s Human Development Index and has just passed a law making broadband Internet a legal right will stand alongside Lebanon as the only two countries in the world to offer: Online Tax Free Shopping!

Global Blue, the inventor of online tax free shopping, plans to implement its technology in the Lebanese market in August 2010.

[...]

The digital tax free shopping technology has only been implemented in Finland so far, making Lebanon a leader in this domain, the company said.

The thought of it gives me goosebumps. It gives me great relief to know that while I wait 15 minutes for my shopping cart to load, I will not be taxed for my purchases.

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