While everyone in the export community is enjoying a little schadenfreude over the Department of Defense’s inadvertent export of nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan, we shouldn’t lose sight that there are still plenty of civilian exporters that might want to tighten up their own compliance programs, assuming that they even have them. Case in point a California-based microwave electronics company profiled in this article in its local newspaper the El Dorado Hills Telegraph. The company, Genesis Microwave, has every reason to have a good export compliance program not only because it produces dual-use goods subject to the Export Administration Regulations, but also because one of its employees recently pleaded guilty to providing dual-use microwave technology to foreign companies without a license.

Here is what the company’s CEO Santiago Cutia, Jr., had to say about the application of U.S. export laws to his products:

“It’s really hard,” Cutia said. “When I see a request for quotation from a country on the National Security List, I know we would need to acquire an export license. For example, take a company from Iran. First, you need an end-user statement, who’s going to be using the product. Then, you have to submit it to the federal Bureau of Industry and Security.”

This must be done not just company by company that a U.S. firm might want to deal with, but rather contract by contract. The same government-approved Irani company that a U.S. firm sold to six months ago can call, and the entire licensing work must be repeated for each new contract, Cutia said.

I’m sure it will come as something of a surprise to BIS that it is approving exports of dual-use technology to companies in Iran. Note to export control compliance officers: make sure your CEO does more than sign the first page of the compliance program and actually reads it before talking to reporters about export regulations.

The article has one other gem, presumably also conveyed by the CEO to the reporter:

Federal tech-export regulations run to 61 pages, double-column.

In our dreams.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued a Temporary Denial Order on March 17, 2008, against Balli Group PLC and other related U.K. companies, the Armenian air carrier Blue Airways (a/k/a Blue Sky), and Iranian air carrier Mahan Air (which BIS erroneously calls “Mahan Airways”). The TDO arises out of the apparent lease (or sub-lease) of Boeing 747s to Mahan. These aircraft, which had once been in the United Airlines fleet, had been leased by Balli Group subsidiaries initially to Blue Airways and then sometime in 2006 had been leased by the Balli subsidiaries (or subleased by Blue Airways) to Mahan.

The TDO states that Balli had told BIS that the aircraft were not going to be leased or subleased to Mahan, although “open sources” showed that the aircraft, “identifiable by serial number and tail number were under the control of Mahan Air. The TDO also noted that Balli had refused to comply with an order to return the aircraft to the United States pursuant to section 758.8(b) of the Export Administration Regulations. (I can imagine the bemusement of the British companies when a U.S. agency demanded that they should return aircraft owned by them without compensation to the United States. I don’t think they said “no,” rather they probably said “not bloody likely.”)

Although the TDO doesn’t describe the “open sources” that it refers to, it appears that the arrival of the Blue Sky 747s in Tehran was first noted by Iranian “plane spotting” website www.iraviation.com, and then picked up on a large U.S. aviation-enthusiast forum www.airliners.net. The website www.airfleets.net also picked up the transfer of the aircraft. All this goes to show what should be fairly obvious: it’s really hard to hide a 747.