Reading the Mail

Whistle blowing or bum rap?

While going through documents that came across her desk, Secretary Marion Gibson, 42, began to surmise that her boss, John Z. De Lorean, 56, founder of the De Lorean Motor Co., had managed to avoid spending about $3.3 million the company was supposed to invest on its automaking facilities in Northern Ireland.

His outlay allegedly was part of a deal under which the British government would provide $160 million in loans, grants and guarantees to lure the new company to build an auto plant in economically depressed Ulster. De Lorean is producing a high-performance sports car that sells for $25,000 in the U.S. Some 2,000 cars have been sold since the auto was introduced last spring.

British-born Gibson took her accusation to Nicholas Winterton, a Conservative Member of Parliament and a critic of government aid for De Lorean's project.

Winterton immediately informed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's office and asked for an investigation.

De Lorean promptly rejected the charges as "completely asinine." Said he: "The government has two people on our board to monitor our finances. Every cent we have ever had has been monitored by British internal revenue." Indeed, the Thatcher government went out of its way to downplay the affair. Britain's Solicitor-General Sir Ian Percival said that only "routine" inquiries were being made and stated flatly: "Neither the Prime Minister nor anyone else has ordered an investigation of the company's affairs or anything remotely like it."

Undeterred by that chilly response, Gibson gave the London Daily Mirror a memo purportedly written by a De Lorean executive. It was silent on the subject of a multimillion-dollar investment shortfall, but described a lesser lapse. The memo said the company had purchased gold faucets and other items worth $19,000 at Harrods, the expensive London department store, for the Ulster home of one of its executives. The firm reportedly "fuzzed" these expenses in bookkeeping records. De Lorean dismissed the latest charges and added: "We plan to file substantial libel actions against all the De Lorean people involved."

Meanwhile, company executives suggested that the secretary had probably misunderstood the documents she saw. Said an official: "She may have been disgruntled. Her position at the company had been reduced a couple of times because of basic inefficiency." The affair was quickly deteriorating into a case of charge vs. countercharge.

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