The Southwest Airlines gift card scandal that recently engulfed the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has cost disgraced former CEO Rossi Ralenkotter a lucrative consulting contract with the tourism agency.
Ralenkotter, who was receiving $15,000 a month from the contract, was let go after Clark County authorities charged him earlier this month with theft and official misconduct as part of a seven-count criminal complaint leveled in connection with a yearlong police investigation into the misuse of some $90,000 worth of gift cards the LVCVA bought from Southwest during Ralenkotter’s tenure.
It’s alleged that Ralenkotter, who was one of the most powerful public officials in Nevada, and two executives who served under him, Cathy Tull and Brig Lawson, appropriated tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of the cards for personal use and conspired to conceal the transactions.
Tull, who was chief marketing officer, and Brig Lawson, who was business partnerships director, also have been charged, as has Eric Woodson, a marketing executive with Dallas-based Southwest.
LVCVA Chairman Larry Brown said CEO Steve Hill revoked the contract after speaking with members of the board of directors’ executive committee.
“Once the conversation took place, Mr. Hill felt the board sentiment was to terminate the contract right away,” Brown told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, adding that he supported the decision.
“My focus is moving forward,” Hill said. “We have done a lot of things in the last 18 months, and that’s where the focus will stay.”
The contract was part of a lavish package the board awarded the 72-year-old Ralenkotter when he retired last August, just as the investigation was heating up. He continues to receive a state pension of nearly $300,000 a year.
“I’m not taking away anything that transpired with the gift cards,” Brown said. “But people need to know the good that Mr. Ralenkotter and the authority have accomplished over the last 25 years. There are a lot of good things that came out of the authority, and Rossi’s fingerprints are all over it.”
