As many as 12 other top executives may have been traveling with the secretary but their whereabouts could not be determined. Officials from five companies confirmed that executives that had been slated to travel with Mr. Brown were safe."RON BROWN'S PLANE CRASHES IN CROATIA NO SURVIVORS FOUND NO SIGNS OF FOUL PLAY " JOURNAL OF COMMERCE," Journal of Commerce April 4, 1996, Pg. 1A .A spokesman at Parson Corp., of Pasadena, Calif., said the group was supposed to break up into two traveling parties. He said he didn't know if Leonard Pieroni, the company's chairman, was aboard the plane that crashed.
Four executives scheduled to join the trip were not on board. Joseph Sutton, president of Enron Development Corp., Houston, Texas, was not on the plane. A company spokeswoman said he is in the Balkans looking at company projects.
Alfred Checchi, Northwest Airlines co-chairman, and Ronald B. Woodard, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group president, were scheduled to join the group later on Wednesday in Bosnia. And Daniel Bannister, president of Dyncorp, decided at the last minute to cancel the trip.
POLICE were today investigating the possibility that insurance fraud by a Swiss resident listed among the 230 killed in the TWA Flight 800 explosion may have been behind the disaster.":POLICE PROBE JET CRASH THEORY ," Birmingham Evening Mail; May 27, 1998.Swiss police, citing suspicion of fraud, have searched a chateau rented by Algerian-born Mohammmed Samir Ferrat. A week after Mr Ferrat was listed as dying in the crash his credit card was used to buy pounds 430-worth of goods.
Lawyer Gerald Page said the businessman took out life insurance policies worth several million pounds in the weeks before the July 1996 crash near New York. Investigation
Swiss authorities have been investigating Mr Ferrat for 18 months, Swiss TV said. French authorities are also conducting their own investigation.
Mr Page, who said he represented a shipping firm in the Ivory Coast with claims against Mr Ferrat, advised Swiss insurer Winterthur about his suspicions.
Werner Rast, a spokesman for the insurance company, said that it had held up payment of a policy worth pounds 420,000 to Mr Ferrat's family.
French firms have paid out claims on similar policies held by Mr Ferrat, however.
Mr Page said Mr Ferrat's company was deep in debt and that he had made transfers of millions of pounds into family and ofhore accounts in the weeks before the explosion.