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.