Minnesota Company Settles Charges
Relating to Illegal Exports

The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced that it has imposed a $35,000 civil penalty on TLC Precision Wafer Technology of Minneapolis, Minnesota to settle charges that the company illegally exported certain epitaxial wafers and oscillator chips. These products are used in automotive, communication and radar systems.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) charged that, between March 1998 and May 1999, TLC Precision Wafer Technology committed five violations of the Export Administration Regulations when it exported aluminum gallium arsenide/gallium arsenide epitaxial wafers to Israel and Brazil without the required export licenses and failed to file the necessary Shippers Export Declarations (SEDs) for the transactions. The company also provided false information on the SED for a shipment of oscillator chips to Israel.

A portion of the civil penalty, $20,000, is suspended and will be waived, provided that TLC Precision Wafer Technology does not commit any additional violations during the one-year suspension period.

Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Julie L. Myers commended the efforts of Special Agent Randall Robbins of BIS’s Chicago Field Office for his work in this investigation.