The San Diego Union-Tribune


October 21, 2000, Saturday


SECTION: BUSINESS;Pg. C-3

LENGTH: 247 words

HEADLINE: Federal agencies raid offices of TomaHawk II

BYLINE: Don Bauder; SENIOR COLUMNIST

BODY:
Twenty agents of the Customs Department and several Department of Defense agencies descended on San Diego's TomaHawk II Thursday and spent a day going through files and copying data.

However, the raid was not considered earthshaking by the defense contractor, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.

The company specializes in document imaging and conversion, largely for the military. In June of last year, TomaHawk's president and chief executive Steven Caira advised the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls "that we found out that we may have had some compliance issues with export control regulations," said John Barriage, corporate counsel for the company.

The company had sent certain nonclassified data on military equipment to India for conversion to a computer-intelligible format, Barriage said. After doing so, TomaHawk II questioned whether it had followed correct compliance procedures.

The company hadn't heard from defense officials since December of last year, Barriage said. Then the agents entered the premises Thursday with search warrants.

"There were some disruptions because they had access to our computers," Barriage said, adding that the company was back running at full steam.

TomaHawk II is the only operating subsidiary of TomaHawk, a Canadian-based holding company whose stock once traded on the Canadian Venture Exchange, formerly the Alberta Stock Exchange.

Trading in the stock was suspended last May.