17 Corporate Crime Reporter 29(1), July 21, 2003

INGERSOLL RAND PAYS $137,500 TO SETTLE IRAQ TRADE CHARGES

Ingersoll Rand Corporation last week paid $137,500 to settle charges that it illegally traded with Iraq.

In March 2000, an Ingersoll Rand unit based in Switzerland sold six air compressors to Iraq through an Jordanian distributor, according to company spokesman Paul Dickard.

The deal was worth $1 million, Dickard said.

The Ingersoll Rand unit failed to get the required federal licenses to sell the air compressors under the oil for food program, Dickard said.

The air compressors were sold to the State Oil Marketing Organization in Iraq.

Dickard said that he didn�t know how the Iraqis ended up using the air compressors.

"They are generally used for oil processing, assembly operations -- general industrial uses," Dickard said. Dickard said that the company reported the problem to the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in November 2002, but that OFAC said that it already knew about the problem. "They didn�t give us credit for self-reporting, because they said they knew about it," Dickard said. Treasury didn�t tell the company how it found out.