Bizjet Resolves Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Investigation

BizJet International Sales and Support Inc. Resolves Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Investigation and Agrees to Pay $11.8 Million Criminal Penalty

U.S. Department of JusticeMarch 14, 2012

Office of Public Affairs(202) 514-2007/ (202) 514-1888

WASHINGTON—BizJet International Sales and Support Inc., a provider of aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) services based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has agreed to pay an $11.8 million criminal penalty to resolve charges related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for bribing government officials in Latin America to secure contracts to perform aircraft MRO services for government agencies, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

The department filed a one-count criminal information today charging BizJet with conspiring to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions and a deferred prosecution agreement in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma.

According to court documents, BizJet paid bribes to officials employed by the Mexican Policia Federal Preventiva, the Mexican Coordinacion General de Transportes Aereos Presidenciales, the air fleet for the Gobierno del Estado de Sinaloa, the air fleet for the Gobierno del Estado de Sonora, and the Republica de Panama Autoridad Aeronautica Civil. In many instances, BizJet paid the bribes directly to the foreign officials. In other instances, BizJet funneled the bribes through a shell company owned and operated by a BizJet sales manager. BizJet executives orchestrated, authorized and approved the unlawful payments.

Under the terms of the department’s agreement with BizJet, the department agreed to defer prosecution of BizJet for three years. In addition to the monetary penalty, BizJet agreed to cooperate with the department in ongoing investigations, to report periodically to the department concerning BizJet’s compliance efforts, and to continue to implement an enhanced compliance program and internal controls designed to prevent and detect FCPA violations. If BizJet abides by the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, the department will dismiss the criminal information when the agreement’s term expires.

In addition, BizJet’s indirect parent company, Lufthansa Technik AG, itself a German provider of aircraft-related services, entered into an agreement with the department in connection with the unlawful payments by BizJet and its directors, officers, employees, and agents. The department has agreed not to prosecute Lufthansa Technik provided that Lufthansa Technik satisfies its obligations under the agreement for a period of three years. Those obligations include ongoing cooperation and the continued implementation of rigorous internal controls.

The agreements acknowledge BizJet’s and Lufthansa Technik’s voluntary disclosure of the FCPA violations to the department and their extraordinary cooperation, including conducting an extensive internal investigation, voluntarily making U.S. and foreign employees available for interviews, and collecting, analyzing and organizing voluminous evidence and information for the department. In addition, BizJet and Lufthansa Technik engaged in extensive remediation, including terminating the officers and employees responsible for the corrupt payments, enhancing their due-diligence protocol for third-party agents and consultants, and heightening review of proposals and other transactional documents for all BizJet contracts.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Daniel S. Kahn and Stephen J. Spiegelhalter of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Leitch from the Northern District of Oklahoma has provided assistance in the case. The department has also worked closely with its law-enforcement counterparts in Mexico and Panama in this matter and is grateful for their assistance. The ongoing investigation is being assisted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Additional information about the Justice Department’s FCPA enforcement efforts can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa.

News Release from Dell - Improve IT Efficiency

Dell Helps Insteel Industries, Inc. Improve IT Efficiency While Reducing Costs

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Date : 3/7/2012

Round Rock, Texas

• Manufacturing company chooses Dell and Dell Services for solutions from the desktop to the data center
• Dell enables Insteel Industries, Inc. to increase IT flexibility and agility, allowing for a rapid, two-business-day systems transition during an acquisition
• Insteel moves from RISC architecture to Dell x86 standardized platforms

Dell is enabling Insteel Industries, Inc., one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of steel wire reinforcing products for concrete reinforcing, to drive IT efficiency while providing a flexible infrastructure that can adapt quickly to immediate and changing demands. By implementing Dell solutions and services, Insteel increased manageability and reliability across its data centers, and will save more than $70,000 on maintenance costs by replacing aging equipment with new servers.

Insteel relies on technology solutions in the manufacture of its products 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Faced with a client refresh cycle and integration of a recent acquisition, the company selected Dell to help drive technology standardization across its nine manufacturing facilities to have better control over manageability and reliability of IT assets.

The infrastructure consists of Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers, Dell PowerVault™ Storage, Dell Latitude™ laptops, Dell OptiPlex™ desktops and is complemented with deployment processes and onsite support from Dell Services.

Keeping facilities running 24/7
Viewing technology as delivering a competitive advantage, Insteel relies on Dell PowerEdge servers in all of its locations. The company deployed Dell PowerVault MD storage arrays and terminal servers to support flexible computing on the plant floor with easily expandable and high-performance infrastructure. Dell is also helping Insteel save time and increase efficiency as it transitions to Windows Server 2008r2. With new virtualized architecture, Insteel does not have to deploy new hardware as it moves off the Windows Server 2003 platform.

To support its ERP system, the company is transitioning from using PA-RISC platforms to Dell PowerEdge servers. This transition is expected to save the company about $70,000 on hardware maintenance costs over five years.

Insteel relies on Dell ProSupport™ for onsite service for its servers, desktops and laptops, helping to ensure mission-critical uptime in its plants. 

Maintaining remote client management
At the close of a recent acquisition, Insteel needed to bring new employees onto its network immediately. Through the Dell Ships Fast program, the company received Latitude laptops within 48 hours. Insteel then configured the systems, sent them out and created a mobile command post at each acquired facility. The acquisition closed on a Friday and by Monday each mobile command post was connected to Insteel’s network with its products shipped out of the company’s ERP system day one after the acquisition.

For the hardware refresh in the facilities, Insteel needed PCs with a small form factor due to limited space. After evaluating several options, the company selected Dell OptiPlex small form factor desktops. The OptiPlex desktops also offered the robust remote management capabilities Insteel required, enabling IT staff to resolve issues by remotely controlling client machines in multiple locations.

To accelerate deployment of the desktops, Insteel engaged Dell Deployment Services and used Dell Factory Image Load. The OptiPlex desktops were preconfigured with the company’s image, which saved 30 minutes of configuration time for each system. Dell Deployment Services managed the onsite installation of new PCs, enabling Insteel to get a complete facility up and running in eight to 12 hours. As a result, the company rolled out more than 80 Dell OptiPlex PCs in a four-week period and avoided having to add additional IT staff.

Quotes
“We look for a technology provider who can pretty much bring the complete solution to the table all at one time, and Dell was the natural choice for the business. The simpler we can keep our environment, the more easily our small staff can deploy packages, do operating system upgrades and troubleshoot problems. IT management is simplified and we feel like that gives us a competitive edge.” - Mark Coleman, Manager of Systems and Database Administration, Insteel Wire Products

“Our work with Insteel Industries is a true example of an end-to-end partnership,” said Bill Popp, Dell’s vice president of Manufacturing Sales. “From servers to storage, laptops to desktops and Dell Services at every point in between, our work with Insteel shows that making improvements throughout the entire IT infrastructure of a manufacturer can produce even greater results around efficiency and cost-savings. We have the expertise, solutions and hardware available to help at every step of a transition, which helped Insteel’s recent acquisition process take place faster and at a lower cost.”

“With a large scale deployment of several technologies as well as the integration of new employees from an acquisition, it could have been easy for a slight misstep to create major disruptions for Insteel,” said Doug Schmitt, vice president, Dell Services. “Dell Services provided deployment services and expertise to lower costs, avoid downtime and reduce installation times. Our onsite support helped ensure production was up throughout the transition and continues on an ongoing basis.”